


Ten Miles Out of Town

by GingersSailboat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abusive Relationship - NOT Ben/Armitage, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Extramarital Affairs, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Oral Sex, Post-Break Up, Semi-Slow Burn, Unhappy marriage, Young Love, anger issues, brief mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingersSailboat/pseuds/GingersSailboat
Summary: In a tiny, pine tree-lined town with a population of less than four thousand, Ben Solo works as a mechanic in his dad's garage and endures the well-meaning but desperate attempts of his friends to set him up on dates and get him over a heartbreak that's been haunting him for six years.The object of that heartbreak is Armitage Hux, the high school sweetheart he'd been set to marry before his father Brendol had made the last-minute, unexplained decision to drag the family back to England and cut Armie off from him completely. His attempt at recovery is made all the more difficult when Armie suddenly arrives back in town, unhappily married to the cold yet wealthy Enric Pryde and clearly hiding a secret.Despite his friends' warnings that getting close to Armie again is just asking to open up new wounds and rub salt into old ones, Ben finds himself drawn to him, unable to shake the thought that maybe they have a second chance to make things work.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo, Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, background Finn/Poe
Comments: 83
Kudos: 387





	1. Here Again

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy reading! I'll do my best to update frequently, but comments and kudos really do help motivate me to write so I'd appreciate it so so much if you could drop me a couple! <3 
> 
> Warning: this story will contain discussions of emotional and physical abuse. This never takes place between Ben and Armie, but instead between Armie and Pryde, and between Armie and Brendol Hux in flashbacks. At this stage I have no intention of actually writing any graphic descriptions of this abuse - it will be talked about amongst the other characters after the fact, for example when one of them notices a bruise etc. - however if this changes then I will update tags accordingly, and add additional warnings in the notes before each relevant chapter. I have also not tagged this story as Armitage Hux/Enric Pryde as their relationship will not be romantic or sexual - this is all I'll say for now as I don't want to ruin the story, but rest assured that at no point is Armie actually in love with Pryde or emotionally attached to him.
> 
> That's all for now - please enjoy! x

Ben awoke to his phone ringing directly beside his ear. The sinking realisation that he’d forgotten to put it on charge before passing out the night before washed over him, and he rolled over with a groan to blindly grab for it and wedge it between his ear and the pillow. He didn’t bother looking at the caller ID, knowing there was only a small handful of people it could be anyway, none of whom required a particularly formal greeting. While he waited for whoever was on the other end to speak, he rubbed some dried sleep from his eyes and tried to get the clock on his nightstand to come into focus. Shit, 9am. Well, that explained the phone call.

“Good morning, sunshine.” Han’s voice was dry and achingly sarcastic, and Ben could practically picture the bored look on his face. “Glad to know you’re still alive.”

“Ugh.” Ben forced himself to sit up, tugging a hand through his hair. “M’sorry, my alarm didn’t go off.” He could see his jeans laying in a crumpled heap on the floor, and one of his boots wedging the bedroom door open, the other presumably out in the hall. “I’m up. I’m coming in.” A quick glance under the bed covers told him he was still wearing his boxers, which confirmed his suspicion that he’d definitely come home alone last night, and that nothing interesting had happened. No surprises there.

On the other end of the line, Han sorted and Ben heard the clink of a coffee mug being set down. “You’re damn right you’re coming in. C’mon, you’ve got clients picking up today, get a move on.” And with that, the line went dead.

The heat was oppressive already, and the sheets stuck to Ben’s legs as he kicked them off and dragged himself out of bed. It was the time of year right at the end of summer when tropical storms would sweep in through the town and drench the air for a couple days before completely drying up again, meaning each day could fluctuate between blistering, stagnant heat or torrential downpour with thunder and lightning, or sometimes both in the same day if you got lucky. Through the slats in his blinds Ben could see how bright it was out, heat lines wavering over his drive and the hood of his truck.

The beer from the night before was threatening to make a reappearance, so Ben headed for the bathroom and stepped under the spray of the shower without waiting for it to warm up. The cool water helped settle his stomach and dispel the prickling heat across his shoulders, and he went through the motions of scrubbing himself clean with a vague appreciation for the fact he didn’t have to worry about how he looked any more now that the date was over. It was only once he was out of the shower that he noticed the bottle of cologne sitting on the side of the sink, the one he only ever used on the rare occasions he agreed to a date. He picked it up with a miserable grimace and put it away in the bathroom cabinet, knowing it wouldn’t see the light of day again for a while. He stared at himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, willing his bloodshot eyes to clear up so there’d be one less thing for Han to comment on once he got to the garage.

A wall of heat hit him as he loped out of the house and headed for his truck, immediately undoing the calming effect of the shower and making him feel like he’d just run a mile. Ben braced himself before getting into the cab of the truck, knowing it would be uncomfortable after it had been sat in the driveway soaking up the sun all morning. Still, it was the tidiest it had been in weeks, since he’d gone to the extra effort of clearing it out so his date wasn’t sitting in amongst broken car parts and half-full bottles of oil and gas. As he reversed out of the drive and got on the main, pine tree-lined road heading into the centre of town, he reached over and fished a crumpled packet of cigarettes out the glove box, fumbling a little to get one lit. He was out of practice – he never smoked any more, except when he’d had a particularly shitty time. And Christ, was last night shitty.

It had been a disaster, there was no way around it. The exact conversation he’d wanted to avoid, and yet had been bracing for since he’d arrived at the bar, had occurred less than five minutes in. _“You know, I was actually really surprised when you called – I thought you were, like, engaged?”_ It was the same every single time, except sometimes there was a spin on it and he got, _“I thought you were, like, gay?”_ Then came the conversation where he had to explain it all, the whole messy story he’d spent six years and counting trying to forget, and do his best not to sound bitter, and then it inevitably dissolved into a free therapy session where his date felt comfortable enough to spend the entire three hours telling him all about _their_ last heartbreak and how they were trying to “get back out there” now and so would accept just about anyone, _“even you!”_

At least the drive into town helped to clear his head. The thick tyres on his truck kicked up orange dust from the road behind him, part dried mud and part wood shavings carried over on the wind from the timber yard out in the forest. The air smelled like sap and cut grass, and Ben gave up on the AC in favour of cranking his window down and letting the breeze fly through his hair. He fiddled with the radio until he managed to tune in to the town’s tiny local radio station, the one that never played anything but 60s and 70s throwbacks with the occasional burst of cheesy 80s when their high school intern got a chance to put together a set. It was still far better than silence, and he found his mood considerably lifted by the time the garage came into view and the last few lines of the Beatles’ _‘Twist and Shout’_ was dying down.

Ben pulled into the forecourt of the garage and beeped the horn once to get Finn’s attention, grinning when he jumped and clutched a hand over his chest. Finn stuck his middle finger up at him, and Ben couldn’t help barking a short laugh as he parked up and jumped down from the cab. There were already two cars raised up in various states of disrepair, and he could see Rose’s legs sticking out from underneath one of them covered in her usual blue corduroy dungarees, the ankles rolled up.

“Nice of you to join us.” Finn wiped his hands off on an oily rag and glanced over his shoulder as Ben dropped the cigarette butt and crushed it under his shoe. He raised his eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Shut up.” Ben stripped off the open flannel he’d thrown on, leaving him in an off-white wifebeater and his jeans so he could slide under the car he’d been working on the day before. It was ancient, and belonged to one of the town’s oldest residents, and not someone he wanted to cross. If it wasn’t ready for her when she came to collect it later that day, he didn’t want to take his chances – he wouldn’t put it past her to grab the nearest heavy object and thump him with it. Grunting as he wrestled with a particularly stubborn ball joint, he asked, “Where’s dad?”

“Taking a nap on the couch in the office. Says it’s his turn now.”

Ben snorted, shaking his head. “He’s in the doghouse.”

Finn sat himself down on the floor beside the car, taking a gulp of water from his metal bottle and leaning his head back against the wall. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, a testament to the fact he’d already been working for a couple of hours under the intense heat and was overdue a break. “Yeah, you think?”

“Nah, I _know_. Him napping in the office means he got a shitty night’s sleep on the couch at home last night.” Ben smirked, then made a satisfied noise as he finally got the ball joint to loosen. The flakes of rust coming off the car every time he touched it were a red flag hinting it really needed to be scrapped and replaced, but the owner wasn’t the kind of woman to accept that without an argument, so he figured he could just do his best to repair it so it was safe enough for her 15 mile-and-hour trundles around the shops in town.

After a little while Finn got back up to his feet and went to go help Rose on her car, though for an apprentice she was working a hell of a lot faster than Ben, and didn’t seem to need much assistance. She’d joined the team at the garage straight out of high school, with the aspiration of eventually saving up the money to follow in her sister’s footsteps and get her engineering degree. She worked insanely hard, so hard that Ben knew Han sometimes felt put to shame by her ethic, but still managed to get along with everyone without coming off as stuck-up.

They worked in peace for the remainder of the morning, taking the occasional break to sit by the fan in the corner of the room and knock back as much water as they could to keep them going, until the early afternoon saw the arrival of a familiar truck on the forecourt. The retro ‘Resistance Construction’ logo stamped on the side was covered in flecks of mud and dust but recognisable nonetheless, and even if that hadn’t been enough, the bickering of the two people who jumped down from the cab a second later certainly was.

Finn grinned, pushing away from the bike he’d been tinkering with and going over to greet Poe. He leaned in to peck his lips before even saying hello, and Ben wished his stomach didn’t twist at the sight of it. The absolute last thing he wanted to be was bitter and resentful towards his friends, but it wasn’t always as easy as deciding not to be affected.

Fortunately for him, Rey wasn’t afraid to voice what he’d been thinking, and as she kicked her door shut she cheerfully called out, “You could get a room, how about that?”

Ben smirked and tossed his grease rag over his shoulder. “Amen.”

Poe hissed in mock-hurt, coming over to clasp Ben’s hand and tug him into a one-armed hug. “Ouch. Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Was that on purpose? Maybe someone was taking up the other side…?”

So they were starting straight on that already. Ben supposed it only made sense that Poe was curious – he’d been the one to set the date up, after all, and despite his disastrous track record with finding Ben new love, his enthusiasm and relentless belief that the right person would come along eventually never seemed to waver. Still, that didn’t mean that Ben felt up to talking about it.

“You need something, Dameron?” he asked irritably, while Rey went over to inspect what Finn was working on.

Poe rolled his eyes and quirked his fingers to signal that Ben should follow him round the back of the truck. Ben couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him when he saw the state of it, ignoring the thump to his shoulder he got in return. The back window behind the cab was completely smashed in, only a few little shards of glass left slinging to the metalwork around the edges of the pane.

“How the hell did that happen?” he asked, jumping up into the bed of the truck and wrapping the grease rag around his hand for protection so he could poke around and get a better look.

“Ask _her!_ ” Poe said, jabbing his finger in Rey’s direction.

She perked up at the mention of her name, stomping back over and getting in between Poe and the truck. “Hey, no, you’re _not_ going to pin this on me. He told me he was still hanging on to the end of this pipe we were carrying, so I let my end go, and the whole thing just went through the window!”

“I told you I was holding it, not that you could let go!”

With impeccable timing, Han chose that moment to stick his head out the office door and peer into the main garage. “Hey! I’m sleeping back here, the hell’s going on?” One side of his hair was mussed up, the other strangely matted, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Chewie had been grooming him while he’d been asleep. He was dressed in the same clothes as the day before, confirming Ben’s suspicions that he’d been exiled from the house by Leia for a while. It wouldn’t last long, it never did. He’d probably be back by that night, the whole ordeal forgotten. Ben was convinced they just kept doing it to keep things interesting. He supposed after that many years of marriage, they had to do _something_.

Chewie bounded out past Han’s legs and made a beeline straight for Rey, who dropped to her knees immediately to sink her fingers into his mess of fur. Ben had no idea how old Chewie was – he only vaguely remembered actually getting him when he’d been much younger, but he’d been part of the family for so long that he seemed practically immortal, a roving brown mop with no identifiable breed and a personality that could switch from golden retriever to rottweiler depending on who he was around. Rey seemed to be a particular favourite.

“Oh. Hey, kid. Didn’t know you were here.” Han quirked a smile in her direction, which was about as close as it was possible to get to favouritism from Han. It was the kind of thing that used to set Ben alight with jealousy, but he’d mellowed out considerably over the years, especially once he’d worked out that Rey’s perpetually sunny disposition was useful for taking the heat off himself if he didn’t feel like talking. She’d been a godsend when everything had fallen to shit six years ago. “You wanna take him round the block?”

“Yeah! Sounds good. I don’t think Poe needs me – seems like I’m doing more harm than good here.” Had she been a few years younger, Ben could picture her complementing that statement with a stuck-out tongue. She turned back to Han and grinned. “You coming?”

“I don’t know that we can spare him. He’s really pulling most of the weight round here,” Ben quipped.

Han clipped him round the back of the head as he walked past and out on to the forecourt. “I’m due lunch. Be back in an hour.” He and Rey ambled out together and paused to cross the road before disappearing into the forest on the other side, Chewie bounding after them and yapping round their heels.

While Finn and Rose got to work sweeping the broken glass out of the truck bed into a bucket, Poe sauntered back over to where Ben had gone back to his car. He grabbed the creeper Rose had been using for the other car and dragged it over so he could slide in beside Ben, the pair of them laying on their backs staring up at the rusted underside of the old woman’s ancient Chevy. “So. I’m guessing the bad mood means last night didn’t go well.”

Ben shrugged and did his best to appear unbothered as he set about replacing the ball joint he’d managed to pry out before. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. There’s only so many times you can set me up before you’ll run out of people we went to high school with who’re still hanging around here. Most of them have fucked off out of town already, and the ones that are still here just know me as ‘the guy who was engaged last time I saw him’. And I sure as hell know nobody else is rushing to move here.”

Poe snorted, folding his arms over his chest comfortably as though he were lounging by a pool, not sprawled on the concrete floor of a baking hot garage. “Except the rich bastards we were working for today. They seemed pretty eager to be here – gotta be, with the amount of money they must have shelled out for that place.”

Ben tried his hardest to sound interested, even as most of his attention was taken up on trying to avoid flakes of rust falling in his eyes. “Oh yeah?”

“Mmhm. You know that big ugly house few miles out of town, when you turn left off the main road at the farm and just carry on going?”

Ben knew the house. Everyone in town knew the house. It had started out life as a plantation house way back in the day, but once the land was sold in the wake of the Civil War, subsequent owners had gutted it bit by bit to the point of it looking like a total monstrosity. Half of it had been replaced with ultra-modern glass panelling sometime in the 60s, and there’d been various attempts over the years to paint it, grow plants up it, try to make it interesting. The last people to own it had moved out in the 90s after the work to maintain it became too expensive, and to the best of Ben’s knowledge, it had been empty ever since. It was easy to ignore for the majority of the town’s residents, since it took a good ten-mile drive to reach it and it was the only house around for miles once you reached it, so nobody had to neighbour it. Ben and Poe used to dare each other to go up there at night when they’d been in high school; they’d park their trucks at the bottom of the long drive, near the rusted gate, and take turns to climb over and go up on foot to see who had the balls to get closest. There were rampant rumours about it being haunted, or the scene of a crime, or full of squatters. Whatever the case, neither of them had ever made it as far as the front door. Finn and Armie had told them they were stupid for believing any of it, though neither of them could ever be convinced to even climb over the gate. After a while the house just became an excuse to get in their trucks and drive out somewhere private, the most fun young couples could have in a town like theirs.

“I swear you wouldn’t even recognise it,” Poe was saying, dragging Ben out of his thoughts and back to the present. “New guy’s moved in and cleaned the whole thing up. You should see the grounds, Jesus Christ – by the time me and Rey got up there today, it was all just this…pristine grass lawn with sprinklers watering it all over. White gravel driveway. It’s nuts, they must have had landscapers up there for a couple weeks doing everything without us even realising. Looks like something outta a magazine. Kinda like how you’d expect the garden at the White House to look, or somethin’. Real fancy.” He rummaged in the pocket of his jeans until he pulled out a pack of gum, popping one into his mouth and doing the same for Ben without needing to be asked, since his hands were greasy and in the middle of screwing the ball joint. “Anyway. He’s paying us to gut the whole house, redo it all. Can’t honestly say I like the décor he’s chosen – it’s that ugly minimalist shit, all white marble and clear acrylic furniture that’d hurt your ass if you sat on it longer than five minutes, but whatever, not my business. Point is, he’s paying a fortune for it, so I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

Ben’s interest was genuinely piqued, and he rolled out from under the car so he could sit up and frown at Poe, who rolled out after him. “Who is he? No business round here pays well enough to afford a place like that.” It was true – almost everyone in town was employed in either the timber yard or one of the small local facilities, like teaching at the school or manning the desk at the tiny public library. And even though the timber yard paid generously, it still wouldn’t be enough for a house like that.

Poe leaned the back of his head against the bumper of the car. “His name’s Enric Pryde. He works in the city, I think the idea is that he wants somewhere…quaint to come relax when he’s not working, you know? That’s the impression I got from talking to one of the gardeners real quick. Rich people, I swear to god. The city’s damn near fifty miles away, he’s gotta have a place there too. Imagine buying a house like that as…what, a vacation home?” He shook his head. “And I’ll tell you what, he’s a grim-looking bastard, too. Kinda looks like someone put a wasp in his mouth and told him to suck, or like he stepped in shit.” He snorted. “Looked me up and down like I’d called his mom a whore or something. Spoke to me like it too – seriously, you’d think I was trespassing on his property or something, the attitude he gave me.”

“Sounds like a dick,” Ben commented, rubbing some grease from his hands. “Local, you think? To the city?”

“Hell no – British. Sounds like he should be reading the London news on TV or some shit.”

Ben grimaced. “Mm. Great, more of those.”

Poe shushed him and gave his shin a half-hearted kick, carrying on as though Ben hadn’t said anything, “Luckily I don’t have to deal with him for long, he said his husband gets into town this afternoon and that he’ll ‘handle us’ from there on out. I mean, what the fuck does _that_ mean? ‘Handle us’, like we need babysitting. I’d like to see him try and redo that whole damn house without us.”

Ben huffed out a laugh. “You know that means his husband’s about to be just as much of a dick as him. Sorry to break it to you.” He got to his feet and went to go toss the old ball joint in the scrap metal bucket by the office door. “You get a glimpse at what car he drives? Anything that’s likely to make me a lot of money here if it tragically breaks down?” He grinned.

Poe shoved him. “Nah, didn’t get a look. Surprise surprise, first thing he got sorted was that fancy-ass garage attached to the house. Probably wanted to make sure me and Rey couldn’t get anywhere near his Porsche, or whatever.”

Ben struggled to hold back a smile, waving his rag at the broken window in the truck. “I mean…”

“Oh, fuck off.” Poe grinned, shaking his head. “Anyway. For now I can forget about it. You up for coming out later, take your mind off the fact you remain celibate for another day?” He pushed himself up to sit on the hood of his truck, where Finn and Rose had finished sweeping out the glass and Rose was currently measuring up for the replacement pane they’d need to order.

Ben eyed him warily. “Not if you’re gonna try and set me up again. I told you, I can do it once every couple months, not back to back. Feels too weird.”

Poe and Finn exchanged a glance, which Ben pretended not to notice. He knew what they were thinking. _When is it going to stop feeling weird? Hasn’t six years been long enough?_

“Wasn’t planning on it, buddy.” Poe broke the uncomfortable silence and reached out to give Ben a light punch on the shoulder. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. We’ll swing by the diner, grab a bite, then we can just hang at Maz’s. It’d do you good, I could _feel_ the bad mood radiating off you when I got out the truck.” His face was open and hopeful, but there was something behind it, echoed in Finn’s carefully neutral expression, and even partly in Rose’s even though she’d still been years below them in school when everything had gone down, that radiated pity, and Ben despised it. Like he was one nostalgic day away from a mental breakdown.

“Fine,” Ben said nonchalantly, shrugging one-shouldered in a far too practiced attempt at casual dismissal. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good, I can meet you guys there once Old Miss comes for her car.” He didn’t need to say who he was talking about – none of them actually knew the old woman’s real name who owned the beat-up Chevy, but everyone knew her face.

Another silence settled over them, and Ben felt the tips of his ears turning red. This, more than anything, was the reason he hated accepting Poe’s offers to set him up. He could handle a couple of awkward hours over drinks – the people were always nice enough, always bearable. It was the _expectation_ of it all, his friends’ hope that hung heavy over each new person that this time would be the breakthrough, this time something would click and it would work out perfectly. And whenever that inevitably didn’t happen, there was a part of him that felt like he’d failed, disappointed them, or at the very least just solidified his position as the charity case of the group a little bit more.

“So.” Once again, it was Poe that took responsibility for slicing through the quiet, and out the corner of his eye Ben could see Finn and Rose’s shoulders deflate with relief. “What’s the verdict, Doctor? Will she live?” He smacked the truck affectionately with an open hand, nodding backwards towards the empty hole where the window had been.

Ben took a deep breath, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times as he attempted to shrug off the past couple of minutes and return to himself. “Uh. Yeah – it’s really not a big deal, easy fix. We’ll have to order the glass to be made special but it never takes too long. S’long as the roads don’t get flooded over the next couple days it should be here by Friday, we can fit it in then. I can give you a tarp or something to put over it for now, but you’re good to drive it.”

“Awesome. Thanks, bud, you’re a lifesaver.” Poe jumped down and dug in the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet, but Ben frowned and waved him away.

“S’fine, wait until the glass comes in and pay at the end. We didn’t really do shit today.” Ben rummaged around in one of the storage lockers for a minute until he produced a dark green tarp and some industrial tape, jumping up into the truck bed again to set about fastening it over the hole. It was a rudimentary temporary solution, but it would hold just fine while the air was so hot and still. Ideally they’d get new glass in before the next storm came through. “You going back up to that house again today?” he asked as he worked, voice muffled around the roll of tape wedged between his teeth. Finn and Rose had slunk off to go and get themselves some water, most likely just keen to avoid getting sucked into another uncomfortable almost-conversation.

Poe nodded, fishing his keys out of his pocket as he got ready to leave. “Uh-huh. Only quickly, just gotta grab some stuff I left behind and write up an invoice for how much all that shit he wants is gonna cost him. But hey, that’s my favourite part, so it’s no skin off my ass.” He grinned, waiting for Ben to jump down before climbing up into the cab and turning the keys in the ignition. “When Rey comes back, tell her where I’ve gone, ‘kay? She can have the rest of the day off, don’t need two of us for this bit.”

Ben nodded, standing back to give him space to reverse out.

“And Ben?” Poe called over the sound of the noisy exhaust. “I’ll see you later. No excuses.”

* * *

As it turned out, Ben should have been the one nagging Poe to stick to their plans. He walked to the diner from the garage once he finished up his shift, figuring that if he was going to be drinking there was little point taking the truck. Besides, everything in the centre of town was in easy walking distance anyway, and he knew from experience that he could stagger all the way back to his house on foot too if the need really took him. But, more likely, he’d end up hitching a ride off one of the non-drinkers or just crashing on the couch in the garage office so he’d at least be in the right place the following morning.

When he got to the diner, most of their regular group was already assembled around their usual table, some with milkshakes sat in front of them and others with their noses stuck in menus. Rey and Rose were playing some sort of game with the paper wrappers from their drinking straws, and Finn was arguing with Phasma over who owed who a side order from the last time they’d gone out to eat.

Ben frowned, coming to slide into the booth beside Rey and wrestling out of his jacket. “No Poe?”

Finn shrugged. “I guess he got held up at the house. He hasn’t texted me, though.” He didn’t seem too worried, taking a sip of his shake and resuming his bickering with Phasma.

Poe didn’t show for the rest of dinner. They ate their burgers and fries like they were starving, the age-old argument about classic vs. sweet potato rearing its ugly head when Finn and Phasma ran out of other things to fight about, and they’d each polished off two shakes by the time they decided to leave and head for the bar. Ben checked in with Finn again as they were pulling their jackets back on, and Finn at last agreed to text Poe and try to find out where he was, clearly getting unnerved by his absence too.

Maz’s bar was a staple in town, and had been since before any of them had been born. Maz herself was something of a local legend, ageless in the sense that she looked about as old as a person could get before reaching the grave yet had the spirit and energy of a 20-something-year-old. They’d all had their first drink there, a couple of beers slipped to them when they were seventeen because, “You’re going to do it anyway, it might as well be here where I can keep an eye on you.” She had history of some kind with everyone in town, seemed to know everyone’s business in a way that was entertaining instead of frustrating, like it would have been if it had been anyone else. Everyone had been babysat by her, or employed by her, or had an affair with her, or god knows what else. _Everyone_ loved Maz.

The bar itself was cozy. A low log cabin, the inside was set up with mismatched tables and chairs and a couple of old leather couches grouped around a fireplace on one wall. It was unlit that night, of course, owing to the heat still hanging in the air, but each table had a small tealight in an empty jam jar on top of it to give the place some ambient lighting regardless. There was a deer’s head on the wall at the very far end of the room, and various trinkets and souvenirs from all over the world propped up on shelves behind the bar in amongst the liquor bottles, ostensibly acquired by Maz during her travels in her youth. Like much of the town, certain features of the bar hadn’t been updated since the 60s, and as a result there was a functioning jukebox standing in one corner by the doors to the bathrooms and two arcade games left over from the late 80s. This, coupled with the frayed surface of the pool table and the dart board that had been used so many times the numbers were too pockmarked to read, gave the entire place a deliciously lived-in feel. It wasn’t the shiny, sleek, boutique type of bar that you could find fifty miles away in the city – it was emblematic of the town, a perfect microcosm of everything that Ben loved most about where he lived, and had done since he was young.

They’d got themselves settled on the couches by the fireplace, which were in much lower demand during the summer months when everyone preferred to be as close to the propped-open door as possible to catch the breeze. Come winter, when thick snow blanketed the ground outside and the fireplace was roaring away, the couches became like gold dust and everyone in the bar circled like vultures waiting for their turn to warm up. But for now, they had them all to themselves.

As it happened, their choice of seating was well-timed, as the heavens decided to open just ten minutes after they’d got comfortable. One minute the sky had been a hazy lilac twilight, clear and warm, then the next the clouds had rolled in and a sheet of heavy rain began to hammer the ground. Maz bustled out from behind the bar to hastily slam the door shut, not wanting the floors soaked by the slanting downpour.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Phasma was saying, twisting round to look over her shoulder out the window at the suddenly much darker parking lot out front. “I _said_ it would rain. It was far too humid today, that’s storm weather.”

“Poe’s gonna get drenched,” Finn commented grimly, staring out at the rain with a wince.

Phasma shrugged lightly and got up, rummaging in her bag to grab her purse. “I’m getting first round. Orders in.” This was followed by a chorus of ‘gin and tonic’, ‘just a beer’, ‘vodka soda’ before she headed off in the direction of the bar, using her extraordinary height to neatly weave around a couple of guys from the timber yard and assert herself to the front of the waiting huddle. For someone born and raised in England, she didn’t have much patience for queuing.

The music was loud enough in the bar that it didn’t inspire much conversation, so the group of them settled into their seats and, for the most part, scrolled idly through their phones while they waited for Phasma to return with their drinks. At one point Finn leaned over and nudged Ben’s knee to get him to look at his phone screen, which just showed a text from Poe that simply read ‘on my way’. Ben knew from experience that Poe was irritatingly fond of exclamation marks and emojis and any other way it was possible to spice up a text, so the fact that the message was so blunt did nothing to lessen the strange feeling in his stomach. And judging by the look on Finn’s face, he shared the sentiment that something seemed wrong.

The music floating out from the jukebox changed all of a sudden, and a minute later Ben shuffled backwards to give Phasma room to sit back down and set their tray of drinks down on the low coffee table between the two couches. He grabbed his own beer, taking a sip and nodding to Phasma in thanks.

“Thought I’d play something special, in honour of what I hear was an absolutely disastrous date last night,” she said, giving him a shit-eating grin and pointing vaguely at the ceiling to hint that he should listen more closely to the new music.

_“…all those sleepless nights, and all those wasted days, I wish loneliness would leave me, but I think it’s here to stay…what more can I do, ‘cause I’m wringing myself dry, and I can’t afford to lose one more teardrop from my eye…”_

“Oh thanks. Really, that’s great. Awesome.” Ben rolled his eyes and buried his smirk in another sip of his beer. For some reason, Phasma’s teasing felt entirely different to Poe’s, or Finn’s, or Rey’s. He had a feeling it had something to do with the fact Armie had been her best friend even longer than he and Ben had been together, so the sense of betrayal and loss was something they shared. She was allowed to tease him, because she understood.

Phasma shifted in her seat to face Ben properly, hitching one leg up onto the couch. “So. Who was it this time? Finn couldn’t tell me.”

Ben sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “Nicole. Remember her? She was big into theatre back at school, she played Hermia, or…Helena or something in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that year you were Titania and almost got suspended for going on stage half-naked.” He snorted, rolling his eyes.

Phasma lit up with recognition. “Oh shit, her! Yeah, I remember her. Jesus, I figured she’d have moved away by now, with all the shit she used to chat about her supposed Broadway auditions.” She put air-quotes around ‘Broadway’, eyes widening exaggeratedly in the clearest physical display of ‘I call bullshit’ Ben had ever seen. It was so unbelievably refreshing to talk to someone who didn’t have high hopes for one of these dates revealing the next big love of his life that Ben found himself throwing his head back and laughing, genuinely laughing, for the first time in a good few days.

“I remember this one time my mum sent me to the same summer camp as her,” Phasma continued, a bright grin on her face and her eyes sparkling. “First summer camp I’d ever been to, we don’t have them back home. Anyway, it was meant to be some sort of acting retreat, and I swear to god this girl wanted to turn everything into a goddamn performa… _fuck me_ , what happened to _you?_ ” She trailed off from her story, face falling as she looked over Ben’s shoulder at someone.

Ben twisted round, and came face-to-face with a dripping wet Poe, panting heavily and looking unsettlingly little wild-eyed. Across from him, Finn stood up and grabbed his dry jacket from where he’d wedged it behind himself, going to swap it for Poe’s wet one to try and warm him up.

“…Hey, man,” Ben said warily, shifting over to make room for him to sit down. Poe didn’t. “Is everything okay?” he continued, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. “Did the tarp come off the truck or something, you need me to go out and fix it…?”

Poe shook his head sharply, leaning down and gripping Ben’s shoulder to get him to focus. “No, no. Listen to me. It’s important.” And there was no mistaking that – Poe looked very, very serious, a far cry from the usual laid-back ease with which he carried himself.

“Okay, okay, Jesus. Are you gonna tell me what the hell’s going on?” Ben gripped his arm in return to show him he was listening.

Poe clenched his jaw. “I’ve just come back from that house. Listen, Ben, that guy Pryde, his husband, it’s…” He was cut short by the sound of the door to the bar crashing open, the force of the wind and rain outside blowing it in with far more strength than intended. Ben looked past Poe to watch two figures walk in, the first tall and pale young man with neat brown hair and an inoffensive face and the second…

Oh.

Oh. No.

He looked beautiful. A little taller than how Ben remembered him, though perhaps the six long years of absence had warped his memories. He was lean-figured without bordering on too thin, his legs and waist slender and shoulders visibly delicate even under his clothes. He was dressed in neatly tailored pale grey slacks and a white button-down shirt, with a black, rain-spotted woollen pea coat open over the top. His red hair was a little swept by the wind, a couple of escaped strands hanging down in front of clear green eyes that were fixated on an empty table in the corner by the front window, not roving the bar like those of his companion. His cheeks and the tip of his nose had the same light flush to them they always used to get when he got caught in the rain, likely imperceptible to most in the dark of the bar, but clear as day to Ben. He looked…expensive. He looked elevated, untouchable. And yet at the same time terribly, achingly familiar.

Armie.


	2. Brown Paper Bag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for this chapter: very brief, very vague allusions to Armie's difficult childhood (no specifics mentioned). Description of a panic attack, and a minor self-inflicted injury.

The first time Ben saw Armie, they were both eleven years old. In a small town with a population that didn’t quite total four thousand people, there was only one school available, unless parents wanted the hassle of driving their kids nearly fifty miles into the city and back every day for a shot at something bigger and better. As a result, every kid in the town grew up knowing each other and playing together from as early as kindergarten, to the point where cliques and petty teenage squabbles were more a thing of movies and TV shows than actual lived experience. Until Armie had shown up in Ben’s eleventh year of life, there hadn’t been a single other newcomer to the school.

So, naturally, his arrival had been something of a sensation. There was the fact that he _looked_ different, with hair that bright and eyes that green and, as revealed during their first PE lesson, freckles all over his shoulders. The first time he’d walked into the room and their teacher had introduced him to the rest of the class, all eyes had been staring him down as though he were a specimen from another planet, and he’d just stared right back, blinking owlishly at the rows of small faces gawping at him while Ben wished, subconsciously, that he’d shift his gaze to look at him directly. He’d seemed…scared, but clearly trying very hard to hide it, and he hadn’t said a single word the entire lesson. The first time he spoke was at recess that first day, when someone asked him to remind them what his name was.

And then there was his voice. It was the voice that had caught Ben more than anything else – he sounded so well-spoken and eloquent for a kid, and he never yelled or screamed while he played like most of the others, including Ben himself. He was soft-spoken – the teachers called him ‘polite’ and ‘well-mannered’. It wasn’t a _complete_ shock to the system; Phasma, although she’d grown up in the town from infancy and adopted some of the colloquialisms of her classmates, still retained the clipped accent of her parents, who themselves had lived in England most of their lives. But there was still something different about Armie that set him apart even from Phasma. Phasma knew how to be loud, how to screech and whoop as she tore around the school yard and talk back to teachers, perhaps a little too often. Armie didn’t do any of that. He was quiet and reserved, and likely would have gone friendless had Phasma not glommed on to the accent like a homing beacon and taken him under her wing.

Ben distinctly remembered listening to Leia and Alina, Poe’s mother, gossiping together as they walked the boys home from school one day. Leia was not a gossiper by nature, preferring to make her opinions of people clear and known to everyone, so even at his young age Ben was struck by the feeling that there had to be something particularly interesting going on to warrant this uncharacteristic behaviour. They’d waited until they’d reached a safe distance from the school, although it hardly mattered since Armie had already been taken off home in one of the sleekest, most expensive cars Ben had ever seen, then once they were on the street back to their houses, Alina had said something about “that new little one from England.” Leia had clicked her tongue in a way that Ben knew meant disapproval, and said something along the lines of, “He’s such a _serious_ boy. Someone’s hurt him before, poor thing.”

Ben hadn’t known what she’d meant by that. And for a long time, he wasn’t able to find out. Armie seemed untouchable, accessible only to Phasma and her unique way of getting him to relax and open up. He certainly didn’t _seem_ hurt. He always came to school in the nicest clothes, the kind of clothes the other kids would only wear if they were being forced to church at Christmas or sitting through a family dinner for Thanksgiving. Button-down shirts tucked into slacks with neat little lines ironed into them, and shoes that were always perfectly polished. Everything Ben wore was constantly grass-stained or covered in grease from where he’d been helping Han fix his bike, and he liked it like that. He couldn’t fathom having to be so careful with himself, always conscious that there was a particular ‘look’ at risk of being messed up. Rey had once let her curiosity get the better of her when Armie had turned up to school in an extremely smart pea coat during his first winter in town, and asked why he always dressed like a grown-up. Before Armie could even open his mouth to respond, Phasma had stepped in front of him and announced in the very matter-of-fact voice that bold children of eleven are capable of that, in England, kids at school wore a uniform, so it was probably just what Armie was used to from back home. Armie never confirmed or denied it.

Phasma’s protectiveness over Armie meant that Ben didn’t actually interact with him at all for a good few months after his arrival. As much as he wanted to, he’d been friends with Phasma long enough to know that crossing her was a bad idea, and he also found that his reservations towards Armie actually meant he discovered more about him. Phasma took particular issue with their classmates who, in her words, “wanted to play with Armie like a toy”, and so Ben’s faked indifference towards him meant that she slowly started to trust him with little titbits of information that he patiently waited for and filed away in his head like treasured secrets. Through Phasma, he found out that Armie lived with his father Brendol and his stepmother Maratelle in a large, white clapboard-covered house in the town’s newest cul-de-sac (built during the 50s, which still made it new in comparison to the rest of the town). He found out that his father had a new job running the small bank in town, and that Armie got to go and spend his weekends in the city with something called an au pair. When Ben had asked his mother that night what an au pair was, she’d tutted again and rolled her eyes, muttering something to Han under her breath about “those people.” Again, Ben hadn’t understood their distaste. To him, and to the other kids in the class, going to the city every weekend was a treat they could only imagine.

Phasma was the one to introduce them, in the end. Poe had been off school sick for weeks with chicken pox, and for some reason that Ben couldn’t fathom, Finn and Rey often chose to spend their recess inside reading books in his Uncle Luke’s classroom, so Ben was sitting alone out on the playing field sucking dejectedly on a juice box straw, making the most of the sun before they were sent back inside. Phasma had come up to him alone at first, placing her hands on her hips to give her an added air of authority. She’d already turned twelve, a few months ahead of the rest of them, and the power trip was going to her head.

“Armie wants to sit with you.”

Ben remembered feeling incredibly nervous. He knew how to play with Poe and Finn and Rey. He knew the kind of jokes they found funny, he knew that they liked to race each other and ride their bikes together and play fight. But Armie…Armie was different. He was so…elegant, and proper, and smart. Phasma had told him that Armie was already reading books at a 9th grade level, and that he could speak French as though he’d lived there. He wouldn’t want to run around or play fight, and honestly, Ben wouldn’t want to do any of that with him. He just desperately wanted to be around him, even if he didn’t quite know how.

He’d blinked, and just dumbly replied, “Okay.”

Phasma looked back over her shoulder, and when Ben glanced around her, he could see Armie hovering a little way away in the distance. He was wearing his usual smart get-up, though the sleeves of his shirt had been neatly rolled to his elbows because of the heat, revealing his thin, freckled arms. Phasma beckoned him over, and Ben’s heart proceeded to thud faster and faster as he delicately picked his way through the slightly overgrown grass to come up beside them.

Phasma plonked herself down on the grass without any preamble, but Armie surveyed the ground for a minute with a little frown knitting his brows together before eventually settling down gingerly beside her. Ben was staring the whole time, and it was only when Armie looked at him properly that he realised his jaw had been hanging open.

And then he spoke to him. Just to him, just to Ben, for the very first time.

“Hello.”

People don’t always remember much from their childhood, especially not specifics like details from a conversation. But even if Ben lived to be a hundred, he knew he would never, ever forget that first ‘hello’. It was still hesitant, still reserved, but there had been something hopeful behind it too. Armie wanted to make a new friend, and it was desperately obvious in that single, first word.

Ben had smiled at him, the goofy smile he’d had back then. With his ears that were too big for his head sticking out of the slightly dodgy haircut Luke had given him in the bathroom at home, and the gap in his front teeth where his last baby tooth had been knocked out by a rogue soccer ball in the park and the adult one still hadn’t come through. He’d smiled, and he’d nudged his packet of goldfish crackers in Armie’s direction and watched with mild surprise as Armie had taken one, inspected it curiously, then popped it into his mouth. If Ben had to pinpoint a moment when his crush on Armie really started, it would be right then.

“Hey.”

* * *

Ben left the bar. For a while he’d sat there frozen, unable to look away as Armie and his companion weaved their way through the occupied tables to the empty one in the corner. Armie took the chair that left his back facing the rest of the room, gracefully shrugging out of his coat and hanging it over the back of the chair before sitting down. Immediately he propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. Not once did he look around the bar, keeping his eyes focused the entire time on the space between his companion’s shoulder blades in front of him. He didn’t know Ben was there, he didn’t even look in his direction. For some reason, that hurt more than if he’d looked and still turned away.

Once Armie had been seated for a minute, Ben stood up woodenly and began to make his way to the door. He could vaguely hear Poe calling after him, but the rest of the room had started to sound very distant, the way things sounded when your head was underwater or you were just on the cusp of falling asleep. And yet some things were far too loud – the scrape of a chair beside him, someone across the room laughing, a glass shattering behind the bar. His legs felt stiff as he pushed his way through the crowds, ignoring the protests and shoves he received in return, and barrelled out of the door, immediately finding himself soaked through by heavy, almost horizontal rain. A part of his brain registered that he’d left his jacket inside, along with his wallet and phone, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn back around and go get it.

Ben raked his fingers through his hair, tugging hard but barely feeling it. There was a pressure building in his chest that felt like someone was stepping on his ribs, and every inhale was starting to feel like a monumental effort, wheezing through his lungs like his windpipe had shrunk to a hair’s width. Despite the rain he was starting to feel hot all over, the prickle of it creeping over his shoulders and down his spine, and up into his cheeks until it made the backs of his eyes sting. He was dimly aware of what was happening, the sick familiarity of it dragging him back to six years ago with breakneck speed. The last time this had happened, he’d been standing on the edge of town watching Brendol Hux’s car drive away with his entire life in the back of it. He’d crumpled then, sat down on the ground and ridden out the shock until eventually Han had come by to scrape him up and take him home and start trying to put him back together.

He knew he couldn’t let it happen so publicly again. It was the publicness of it last time that meant the entire town knew his situation, and had spent the following six years looking at him with undisguised pity when they weren’t just tiptoeing around him on eggshells. He knew already the breakdown was coming, it just needed to be somewhere private this time.

Ben was about to start walking in the general direction of town when something caught his eye off to one side. A flash of red hair. He turned his head, entirely against his better judgement, and through the rain-streaked window of the bar he found himself staring right at Armie, and Armie staring back. He hadn’t even realised he’d drifted far enough around the side of the building to be in front of the window, but now he was, his feet felt rooted to the spot. It was as though everything were happening in slow-motion, with Armie raising his eyes to meet his and the look of realisation dawning over his face.

He looked…sad. There was nothing Ben could exactly pinpoint in his expression that made him think so, but this was a face he knew well, perhaps better than anyone else he’d ever met. There was undeniably something melancholy in the slope of his shoulders, the small frown between his brows that only smoothed out when he realised who he was looking at. Armie’s lips parted in surprise, and he straightened up a little from where he’d had his chin propped on his hand. It looked as though his mouth formed the word ‘Ben’, and it almost seemed like he was going to stand up, until his companion across the table said something to steal his attention.

Ben couldn’t stand it. He felt like he was going to be sick, the acidic taste of it already on the back of his tongue. Without waiting for Armie to look back at him, he turned away from the window and started walking back towards town, hands clenched so hard into fists by his sides that he could feel his nails digging into his palms. He was walking as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run, trying to ground himself in the feeling of the needle-like rain hitting his face and the petrichor smell soaking into the earth of the surrounding forests. His boots splashed through the puddles forming in potholes on the road, soaking the cuffs of his jeans, and his t-shirt was plastered to his body by the time he realised where he was actually going.

He was walking in the direction of the garage, closer to the bar than his house and just as good for his purpose, which at that moment was just to be somewhere private. His truck was still parked outside on the forecourt, the bed starting to gather water since he hadn’t put a tarp over it before he’d left for the bar. He walked straight past it and fumbled in the pocket of his jeans for his bunch of keys, his fingers feeling numb as he jammed the right one in the lock and shouldered the door open. A sheet of ice-cold water displaced from the gutter above the door tipped down over his head, but he barely even felt it.

Ben slammed the door shut behind himself, the glass rattling precariously in its panes. He didn’t bother locking it, he just hurled his keys as far as he could into the corner and listened to them clatter as they fell to the floor. Once the door was closed and he was entirely alone, the room silent save for the dull patter of rain on the roof, it was as if the floodgates opened and everything he’d been barely holding in on the walk to the garage suddenly poured out all at once. He screamed, a raw and broken scream only stifled by a choked sob as he struck the side of the car beside him with the palms of his hands. The floor was littered with the tools they’d been using earlier that day, and he lashed out with a kick to send wrenches and screwdrivers scattering across the room. Tearing through to the back office, he strode up to the wall beside the desk and slammed his fist hard against it, over and over again, feeling the skin of his knuckles burst as the drywall crumpled beneath his hand.

He was angry. He didn’t want to be – he’d promised himself years ago that he wouldn’t let himself be angry over any of this. Upset, yes. Heartbroken, without a doubt. But the last thing he wanted was to resent Armie. And yet here he was, _angry_. It was an uncontrollable, feverish kind of rage that he’d never felt before, not even on the day Armie had left. He didn’t even know who the anger was directed at – Armie himself, Brendol, whoever this man was that Armie had decided to marry himself to. Christ. Armie was married. _Armie, married_.

Ben collapsed onto the office couch, the cushions worn and dented from years of use. As he stared up at the cracked grey ceiling, dry sobs heaved from his chest that he didn’t make any attempt to stop or stifle, the idea of putting in the effort to do so feeling monumental, impossible.

* * *

Ben lost track of time as he lay there. After a while the crying stopped on its own, and he was left feeling hollow and numb, like whatever pressure that had been sitting on his chest before had flown away and taken his ribs with it. His throat was raw and his eyes stung, the skin on his face feeling uncomfortably tight from the dried tear tracks.

He was distracted enough that he barely registered the garage door opening out in the main area, and he didn’t look away from the ceiling until Phasma and Poe appeared in the doorway to the office. They were almost entirely dry, protected by the dripping umbrella that had been bent inside out by the strength of the wind that Phasma was holding, Ben’s jacket in her other hand. Without offering a ‘hello’, she laid the jacket down over the arm of the couch and picked up Ben’s legs so she could sit down and then drape them over her lap, leaning her head back against the wall with a soft ‘thud’. Poe took up position on the office chair by the desk, the old springs creaking as he sank down into it.

“Fucked up your hand there,” Poe noted, slicing through the silence without preamble. A glance downwards confirmed that Ben’s hand did indeed look worse for wear, all of his knuckles bruised and split with one leaving a trail of blood down the back of his wrist.

Ben grunted in response.

For a while longer they sat in silence, before Ben eventually, hesitantly, asked, “Did you talk to him?”

The pair of them scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding?” Poe said, shaking his head adamantly. “Of course we didn’t. We left right after you did. We’d have been here sooner, but we went to get this.” From his own jacket he produced a brown paper bag scrunched around a full bottle of scotch, no doubt purchased from the tiny corner shop near the bar that stayed open late to catch the drunk patrons leaving at the end of the night. He leaned forward and wiggled it in Ben’s direction, and Ben took it reluctantly as though it were about to explode.

 _They were no strangers to drinks hidden in paper bags. Back when they were on the cusp of 18, the last couple of months before official adulthood, Maz would sneak them the occasional few bottles of beer to share despite them being a few years south of 21. They’d spent countless nights over the last summer after high school ended – unbeknownst to them then, the summer when_ everything _ended – sitting down by the lake at the back of the farm, passing round bottles scrunched in bags in case the town’s single police cruiser happened to find its way down to them and see what they were doing. Poe would buy those disposable barbecues and spend ages trying to light them, bickering good-naturedly with Finn over the right way to do it, and eventually when the flames licked along the small coals they’d toast marshmallows and make s’mores, which Armie never really warmed to but would still happily eat if Ben fed him his bites by hand. They’d spend whole nights like that, Armie sitting between his legs with his back against his chest, Ben’s jacket wrapped around them both and his chin resting on the silky red crown of Armie’s head as their friends laughed and playfully shoved at each other around them._

“D’you need to go to the emergency room for that?” Poe’s voice brought Ben back to the present, and he realised that both he and Phasma were looking at him expectantly.

Ben flexed his hand, wincing a little at the stiffness in his fingers but finding them all working properly. “Nah. I’m good.” His voice was raspy, and now that he was starting to think a little more clearly in the presence of company, he was embarrassed by how much of a wreck he must have looked. He took his legs out of Phasma’s lap and shifted around to sit properly upright on the couch, twisting the cap off the whiskey with his good hand and taking a long drink. The burn of it sliding down his throat was a very welcome one, and he took another swig before passing it over to Phasma. “Are _you_ okay?” he asked, glancing her up and down. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since entering the office – it was rare that, when she and Poe were together, Poe was the one doing most of the talking. But he supposed it made sense. She’d been Armie’s friend first. She’d cared about him deeply, been told about all the darkness and the dirt even before Ben had, and although she’d dealt with his departure from the town far better than Ben, he knew that was just because of the way she carried herself. It had hurt her immensely, and he imagined it couldn’t be easy for her now to know that he was back.

Phasma shrugged, accepting the bottle and tipping her head back to chug down a long drink. When she came up for air, she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and thrust the bottle out in Poe’s direction without looking away from the hole Ben had created in the wall. “I’m pissed off,” she admitted. Her voice had a hard edge to it, and Ben realised that her intense focus on the broken wall was probably her best way of making sure she didn’t succumb to the same wave of emotions Ben had, and start crying right in front of them. Phasma was too strong for that, she’d never let it all get the better of her like he did. But that didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes come close.

“It’s not his fault,” Ben said grimly, picking at the dried blood on the back of his hand. “He didn’t want to leave in the first place.”

Poe threw his hands up, rising from his chair. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. It fucked up your whole life, Ben, for _years_. You can’t tell me you ever really got over it. This has been eating away at you for six years now, it’s _totally_ gotten in the way of you moving on and being happy, Christ, even just being _okay_ , and now he’s got the fucking nerve to just come back here, married, and…”

Ben groaned and sank his head into his hands. “He’s married. _Fuck_ , he’s married.” 

Silence settled over the room again, and Poe sighed and sat back down, visibly deflating. “Yeah,” he muttered, mouth set in a hard line. “Yeah, he’s married.”

Against his better judgement, already sure that he didn’t want to know the answer, Ben’s morbid curiosity forced him to ask, “Was that him, then, the husband? The one with him at the bar?” He’d only gotten a glimpse of the man Armie had come in with, but he’d seemed…inconspicuous. Young, probably their age. Neat brown hair, done in a similar style to Armie’s. A round face, big eyes. Moved a little skittishly. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d earn enough money to buy a house as big as the one on the outskirts.

Poe shook his head. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he said, “No, uh. Pryde – the guy who’s hired us, Armie’s, uh…Armie’s husband…” He dragged a hand down his face and took a deep breath, “He’s gotta be in his sixties, maybe…63, 64…”

Ben couldn’t help it. He gagged, completely involuntarily, the scotch threatening to come back up as he gripped hard onto the arm of the sofa, his split knuckles screaming in protest. Phasma slid her hand over his back and rubbed it firmly, the still-damp t-shirt chafing his skin uncomfortably. It was good, though, and helped to ground him enough that he could swallow down the bile in his throat and reach again for the whiskey to take another long drink.

“That’s fucked up,” Phasma supplied, voicing what they were all thinking. Armie’s father was around the same age, and the thought of him marrying someone with Brendol’s grey hair and deep-set frown lines and ugly, twisted worldview was disgusting. She took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly enough that Ben could feel she was trembling slightly. “So who was that with him at the bar?”

Poe shook his head. “I don’t know, I have no idea who that was. I guess I could’ve found out – you’d already gone outside by this point, Phas, but Armie tried talking to me quickly right before we left. I just…I ignored him. I can’t even look at him right now, let alone talk to him.”

Ben was practically hugging his knees now, doubled over on the couch with the bottle dangling limply from his non-injured hand. “I don’t want everyone to ignore him, that’s not…that’s not fair on him, he doesn’t deserve that. I know you never really liked him…”

“Hey, no, c’mon. I had some doubts at first, sure, but I never just…straight up disliked him. He was good for you, while he was here. He made you happy, and I liked seeing that – we all did. But then as soon as he was gone…he became _real_ bad for you. I’ve never seen you that low in my life and I hope to God I never have to again. You had us worried. _Seriously_ worried. You _gotta_ see why I’m being cautious about you being around him again.” Poe nudged the toe of Ben’s boot with his own to get him to look up at him, into his eyes, to take what he was saying seriously.

Ben nodded, feeling a little like a school kid being told off. “I know,” he mumbled. “Poe, trust me, I’m…” He took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I’m mad at him. I swear to God, I am. If I saw him now, I’d lose my shit, I’d scream at him, even though it’d kill me to do it, I would.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “I dunno what I’m gonna do. You know what this town’s like, it’s not like I can just avoid him forever. I’ll run into him at the grocery, or Maz’s again, or just walking down the goddamn street. There’s not enough people here for me to just blend in and not see him. So I’m gonna have to, eventually.”

“And that’s fine,” Phasma interjected. “Like you said, I think it’d be…rash, to shut him out completely. This is his home, after all, and like you said…it wasn’t his choice to leave, back then.”

“It’s not leaving that I blame him for,” Poe muttered. “It’s dropping totally off the grid, not choosing to come back when he _did_ have the choice, and now showing up six years later married to a walking fucking corpse.”

“Poe,” Ben said desperately, voice cracking. This wasn’t an argument he could stand to have, especially because he knew, really, that there was very little he could say to justify the situation. He could understand how frustrating it must be for Poe – one of his closest friends had his heart broken, and was about to leave himself vulnerable to round two by refusing to take the hard line and shut Armie out from their lives completely. But Ben couldn’t do that. He knew he couldn’t jump right in and be friends with him himself – he’d never be able to do that, he’d never be able to get past the first hurdle and pretend things were normal. But he wouldn’t stop Phasma going back to him, or Rey, or Finn. He could feel as angry and upset with Armie as the universe would let him, but he’d never be able to hurt him. And depriving Armie of his friends now that he was back home _would_ be hurting him. And that was something Ben just wasn’t prepared to do, wasn’t even capable of.

Poe sighed. “Just…please, be careful, alright? You pulled through the last time this happened but you scared the shit out of all of us. I don’t know what’ll happen if you have to go through all that again. I know we’ve been working on that house for them, but rich people buy to sell all the time – there’s _every_ chance they’ll be here a few weeks and then disappear again. You need to think, _really think_ , about how you’ll handle it if that happens. Don’t let yourself get so close that it’ll put you through the wringer again. You need to stay detached, as much as you can. You got it?”

“Yeah.” Ben nodded, taking another drink of the scotch and handing it over to him like a sort of peace offering, a placating gesture. He could handle it. So Armie was back in town – that was alright. He’d always known, deep down, after all, that Armie was _somewhere_ out in the world living his life apart from him. Why should it be any different now that he was close by? The fact was, he was married. He was unattainable, _truly_ unattainable this time, the aura he’d carried with him that first day they’d spoken now made real by his marriage to Enric Pryde. Maybe that would make things easier. There’d be no false hope, no ‘what if’ or ‘will they, won’t they’. Because they couldn’t. Armie was _married_. Ben could do this job, go about his life, convince himself he was indifferent to the man up in the big house who he’d once been meant to marry. He could be civil. And then at the end of the day, when he got home, he could let it all out just like he’d done that night, in the privacy of his own home, and crumple into bed and wallow in it until it came time to put himself back together in the morning and do it all over again.

“I promise. I swear I’ll be careful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Thank you so so much for all your lovely positive feedback on the first chapter, I'm really happy and excited that you liked it. Please do comment and let me know what you thought of this one, I can't wait to get started on the next few chapters and really get going with the tension between the pair of them, and comments motivate me to write more than anything else! <3


	3. Lightning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for this chapter: a conversation takes place over the phone between Pryde and Armie that could be described as emotionally abusive. Minor description of Ben's hand injury, and a reference to underage drinking/potential underage alcohol problem.

Despite his hope that the news of Armie’s arrival wouldn’t spread as rampantly as the news of his departure had six years ago, Ben woke up the following morning to find everyone around him walking on eggshells. He’d eventually struggled home at around two in the morning, with help from Poe and Phasma, after sinking half the bottle of whiskey and taking turns among the three of them to beat the shit out of an old busted engine with a length of rusty pipe on the forecourt of the garage while the rain steadily soaked them through to the skin. Therapeutic at the time, though now his muscles were screaming at him with every movement and his head, once again, was pounding. His hand was even worse, his split knuckles having scabbed over in the night in a way that made it impossible for him to close his fist without sending a shooting pain up his arm. Deciding against getting into his truck in the interest of public safety, he walked to the garage for work that morning with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled right up over his head, grateful for the misty, grey cloud cover that had descended over everything following last night’s rainfall.

He first noticed people staring at him when he reached the end of the quiet residential street and emerged into the town centre. While he was sure that a good deal of it was just his own paranoia and mild embarrassment about his breakdown the night before, there were definitely a few pairs of eyes that swivelled to look at him cautiously as he walked by. There was the old man who ran the grocery store, who’d been privy to Ben’s frequent late-night trips for beer and junk food all those years ago when Armie had first left. He’d used Han’s ID at the time, making up a very hollow and unconvincing lie that he was buying it for his dad and would take it straight back home and give it to him, wouldn’t drink a drop of it himself. It had worked at first, until Han caught on to what was happening and put a stop to it. Ever since then Ben had been careful to only go in and get his groceries when the high school part-timer was working, to avoid the reproachful look he always got from the owner. It was impossible to miss it now, though, following him down the street as he passed by as if he might suddenly have a meltdown right in the middle of the sidewalk. He supposed it wasn’t an unfair assumption, given the state he’d been in the night before. He hadn’t been thinking at the time about the businesses that might still have been open late, the people that might have seen him storm by.

The only person who actually tried talking to him on the walk was, strangely enough, Old Miss. She drove past him at five miles an hour, her god-awful ancient car sputtering out the mechanical equivalent of a smoker’s cough, and beeped the horn once at him. “Good morning, Ben, love,” she croaked, raising a hand in greeting. “She’s running like a charm.” That alone told him everything he needed to know about just how much everyone was pitying him – for Old Miss, of all people, to take time out of her day to check on him, the situation had to be dire.

This was confirmed for him even further when he arrived at the garage to find a fresh mug of coffee waiting for him. Not a pot for him to help himself from, but a mug, made just for him. By Han. Han had made him coffee. Ben accepted the mug with a little wary glance at him, half expecting to be reprimanded for the massive chunk he’d taken out of the wall in the office. After all, the hand he used to accept the cup was the same one that bore the evidence of his destructive episode, so there was no hiding it. Han, however, didn’t mention it. Instead, in a voice that was clearly straining to sound as casual as possible, he said, “I think I’ve found a leak in the office.”

As it turned out, there was no leak. What there _was_ was a puddle of water on the floor that had quite clearly been poured there deliberately, to give Han an excuse to move the tall filing cabinet away from that area of the room and across to the opposite wall, where it neatly covered the hole he’d punched and hid it from view. Out of sight, out of mind. It was a rather ham-fisted attempt at a cover-up, but Ben found that he genuinely did appreciate it. He didn’t want to have to stare at the hole all day while he was trying to submit orders for parts and balance the account books. All it would do was remind him of hitting yet another low point, and that was the last thing he needed. So he played along with Han’s ‘leak’ theory amicably enough, nodding his agreement and saying, “Maybe we should put a bucket there or somethin’, just in case.” So the bucket was placed there, and remained bone dry throughout the whole day, as he expected. Neither of them mentioned it again.

The rain had turned half the roads in the town to mush overnight, and so for most of the day Han and Finn were on call-out jobs to help dig people’s cars out of various ditches and mud slides. It wasn’t strictly within their purview as mechanics, but there wasn’t any other service in town that would fit the bill either, so they were happy to do it for a flat fee of twenty bucks a pop. It left Ben and Rose working together in the garage, for the most part just going along in amicable silence while the radio provided the background noise. True to form, the musical offerings of the day were all from the 60s, and they were currently listening to the mournful warbling of Marty Robbins lamenting, of all things, the loss of his relationship.

Rose had been entrusted with her first complete engine replacement and was taking the job incredibly seriously. It was Finn’s own car that she was working on, since it had needed doing for a while and it meant that nobody was going to blow up at her if she accidentally messed anything up. She was focusing on it so stringently that Ben didn’t want to interrupt her for anything, which meant that he spent the day answering the office phone and taking on all the smaller, quick jobs that came by the garage. Mostly it was wheel changes, oil changes, wiper fluid changes. Nothing too difficult, which meant he was able to coast by with half his mind elsewhere for the majority of the day.

That changed just after lunch. Ben had been in the office having a coffee and shoving a sandwich into his mouth as quickly as he could so he could get back out and relieve Rose for her break. She’d agreed to stop working on the engine for a while to cover the forecourt jobs, but he could tell she was itching to just eat fast and get back to work. Poe had texted him mid-morning to complain about his whiskey headache, and he’d actually managed to coax a laugh out of Ben by sending him a picture of the makeshift ‘hangover cure’ Rey had assembled for him, which consisted of a rather limp-looking salad and a bottle of water. Poe had captioned it, “I don’t think she’s ever been hungover before.”

He glanced up as the assistance bell rang out from the forecourt. Brushing some crumbs off his lap, Ben stuck his head out the office door to see what was going on, wondering if they’d become so busy that Rose was overrun. However, there was just the one car parked there besides Finn’s – a beautiful, pristine Aston Martin DB4GT in the perfect shade of racing green, complete with a polished wooden wheel and tan leather interior. It was the kind of car he used to fantasise about driving as a kid, especially after his occasional trips to the city with Leia to watch the old James Bond movies whenever they re-screened them in her favourite little independent theatre. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d put the year at 1960, and the price point was so eye-watering he didn’t even want to imagine it. Those cars were _rare_ , limited edition at the time of manufacture, and trying to get your hands on one now was like trying to find diamond dust.

“Ben,” Rose said, sounding relieved. “Sorry, I know you’re eating, but.” She shrugged, gesturing helplessly at the car. As a new trainee, classic cars weren’t high up on the priority list for things she needed to know how to handle, and it was clear that she was balking at the thought of being responsible for something worth that much. Ben would have been panicked too, if he hadn’t spent three weeks every summer of his childhood travelling round the Midwest with Han going to every classic car show he could find. It had been a while since Ben had actually taken a look at the garage’s website, preferring to leave the task of updating it to Finn, but he was fairly sure there was some fine print somewhere that said they’d happily deal with classics and were ‘specially trained’ to do so. An exaggeration, perhaps, but they hadn’t broken one yet, and the chances of anyone in town actually bringing them anything valuable was one in a million.

The man stood on the other side of the fold-away counter didn’t look pleased at the fact he was having to wait. He was dressed the way Ben imagined someone who owned a car like that would dress, in a neatly-pressed suit that probably cost more than Ben’s rent for the past two months. His shoes were polished so well that they were practically reflective, and Ben suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious about his grease-stained overalls and the inch of mud caked on his boots. The man was also staring at him and Rose as if the pair of them were braindead, his mouth pursed and his arms folded over his chest.

“It’s okay,” Ben said gently, giving Rose’s shoulder a squeeze. “Go take your break, I got this.” He wiped his hands on his overalls as Rose gratefully ducked through the back door and into the office, nudging it shut behind her as quietly as possible.

Ben turned his attention back to the man in front of him, who’d started tapping his foot like some sort of cartoon imitation of impatience. “Sorry about that, she’s new,” he explained, rubbing the back of the neck. Something about the way the man was staring him down was making him feel uneasy. “Somethin’ wrong with the car?”

The man sucked in a breath as if he couldn’t quite believe Ben was so stupid. “Nothing’s wrong with it,” he snapped, and the sound of his voice made Ben’s blood run cold. British. He was British. That clipped, prim accent was icy and harsh, and Ben knew immediately who he was talking to. Pryde. He should have realised sooner; he matched the description Poe had given him exactly, and who else in town could afford to drive a car like that, if not the new guy who’d just paid for the most expensive house in a fifty-mile radius? “It needs an oil change. And I need someone to wash it.”

Ben blinked. His hand had tightened around the edge of the counter and split one of the fresh scabs on his knuckles, making it bleed again. He muttered a curse under his breath and grabbed the grease rag from over his shoulder to wrap round it. “Uh…wash it?” he repeated, his brain finally catching up to what Pryde had said. There was a faint ringing sound that wasn’t so much in his ears as it was at the back of his skull, which he couldn’t quite explain but knew couldn’t be anything good.

“Yes, wash it.” Pryde sounded like he was about ready to reach across the desk and throttle Ben if he asked any more inane questions. “The paintwork is delicate, I need it washed professionally. Twice a month. Can you handle that?” His voice was _dripping_ condescension, and it made Ben’s eye twitch.

Before he could answer him, someone’s phone started ringing. Ben had left his back in the office, and after a second longer spent scowling at Ben, Pryde reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was the newest model available, and it had no case on it. Of course. He answered it without a greeting, instead just listening to whoever was on the other end as his mouth twisted into a deeper and deeper grimace. “What now?” he snapped, turning his back on Ben and beginning to pace up and down in front of the desk. “I told them, white paint. No, not cream, _white_. Christ, it’s like I’m talking to a _child_.” He spat the word ‘child’ out like it was poisonous, his shoulders tense with what Ben identified as barely contained rage. He went silent for a while, beginning to tap his foot again. “It shouldn’t be this _fucking_ hard! I told you to handle it!”

Ben was reminded of something else Poe had said to him, the day before when he’d first told him about Pryde’s arrival in town. _“He said his husband gets into town this afternoon and that he’ll ‘handle us’ from there on out.”_ Armie. _Armie_ was on the other end of the phone, it was Armie that Pryde was talking to like that.

In an instant, Ben saw red, the rest of his knuckles protesting as he gripped the counter so hard his hand practically turned white. He was gritting his teeth hard enough to hurt, and the buzzing at the back of his skull now sounded like someone was screaming directly into both his ears. He wished he had the ability to reach and press the call button for Rose – she was much smaller than him and wouldn’t actually be able to do anything to physically restrain him if he lost it, but having another pair of eyes on him would probably help. And yet he was incapable of moving, rooted to the spot as Pryde continued ranting down the phone in front of him, getting increasingly aggressive and animated with every sentence.

“I didn’t think it would be so difficult for you to manage,” he was saying, throwing a hand up in the air exasperatedly. “White paint and marble floor. _White paint and marble floor._ Come on, all you have to bloody do is make sure they don’t destroy anything. Don’t interrupt me again.” Pryde hung up the phone and shoved it back in his pocket, straightening his sharp shoulders and tipping his chin up with an obnoxiously loud sniff. “Where were we?” he said primly, as if nothing had happened. “The car. As I said, I’ll need it washed on the second and fourth Sunday of every month, and I expect it to be handled by an experienced employee, not that one in there.” He waved a hand vaguely towards the back office, where Ben was sure Rose could hear him even through the closed door.

 _Reply._ The part of Ben’s mind that was still awake and functioning was prodding at him, trying to get him to snap out of it. _You need to reply._

Eventually he managed a small, stiff nod, his stomach constricting and making him want to throw up all over Pryde’s pristinely polished shoes.

Pryde huffed and straightened his jacket. “Good.” He turned back to the car and snapped his fingers. “Mitaka, pay him.” He opened the rear door of the car and slid into the back seat, immediately pulling out his phone again and connecting to someone else, though thankfully the door was pulled shut behind him so Ben didn’t have to listen to any more of his cold, grating voice.

The front door of the car opened, and it was only then that Ben realised there’d been a second person there at all. He recognised him immediately as the man Armie had been with at the bar the night before, the brunette with the big Bambi eyes and the timid, nervous disposition. He was dressed in a suit as well, though it was much more plain and something about it just screamed that it wasn’t anywhere near as expensive as Pryde’s. At least it cleared up the mystery of who he was – some sort of employee, clearly. A chauffer, perhaps a personal assistant, probably both. He’d been sat behind the wheel of the car after all, which Ben absently noticed was on the right, confirming his suspicion that the car was British. He approached the counter with his gaze lowered, and Ben was grimly pleased that he at least had the good sense to be embarrassed by his boss’ behaviour.

“How much?” he asked, barely audible. His voice was light and faint – British too, but not unpleasant like Pryde’s. Closer to…closer to Armie’s, honestly.

Ben had to unlock his body slowly, bit by bit. He started by releasing the counter from his grip so that he could numbly slide out the invoice book from under a pile of receipts and pencils and tear off a new sheet. Then he unclenched his jaw, slowly, hearing it click as he mumbled out loud to himself to work out the cost. “Oil change, plus a wash…” He turned the paper round to show Mitaka the total figure. “That alright?” He wished he hadn’t eaten his lunch so fast. The back of his throat felt acid-hot, and his stomach was churning.

Mitaka nodded and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a black leather wallet, the edges lightly scuffed – another sign that he was only a bystander in this whole situation, and probably _not_ the person Ben should be directing his anger at. “Is it alright if I pay cash? Sorry, I haven’t got my US account set up yet…”

“Yeah. Fine, whatever.” Ben punched a couple of numbers into the register and winced as it slammed into his hip when it popped open, accepting the bills Mitaka passed to him. They were crisp and neat, the kind you only ever get issued at the currency exchange places in the airport. So they really _were_ new in town, then – Ben wondered if they’d even been in the country longer than a week. He passed him back some change, the bills significantly more stained and crumpled.

Mitaka took them gingerly and carefully slotted them back into his wallet, then glanced over his shoulder to look back at the car. Pryde was still on the phone, staring out of the opposite window at the woods across the road. Very quickly, so fast that Ben didn’t realise what he was doing at first, Mitaka reached into his jacket again and pulled out a small rectangular business card. It felt expensive, printed on magnolia-coloured pebbled card with embossed black lettering – the kind of thing Patrick Bateman would jerk off over in American Psycho. The writing said ‘Enric Pryde – Investment Broker’ with a little string of numbers and an email address underneath, none of which Ben had the slightest interest in possessing. Mitaka sighed and turned it over, pushing it towards Ben with some urgency. “Take it. Please.”

Ben did as he was told, mainly because he was too confused to do otherwise. He looked at the other side of the card that Mitaka had presented to him, and did a double take. There was another number there, a cell phone this time instead of a registered landline. Underneath the number was one letter, ‘A’, and the words ‘Monday-Saturday’. The writing was Armie’s, there was no mistaking the neat, delicate slant of the numbers. Ben remembered seeing them in Armie’s math book often enough in the one year they’d succeeded in being seated next to each other in class.

Glancing up to check again that Pryde hadn’t seen them, he slipped the card into the breast pocket of his overalls and nodded at Mitaka. He hoped the nod conveyed his ‘thank you’ without him actually having to say it, and Mitaka seemed pleased enough, nodding in return and going to sit himself back in the front seat of the car.

Ben went about the oil change and car wash with the card burning a hole in his chest. It was indescribably awkward, having to soap up and wash the whole thing with Pryde and Mitaka still sitting inside, but neither of them seemed to pay him any attention. Pryde remained on the phone for the entire time they were parked there, though it had to have been to different people, since he’d be screaming one minute and laughing drily the next. Mitaka, for his part, stared resolutely down at his knees and occasionally brought out his own phone to swipe back and forth on his home screen without ever opening any apps, clearly bored out of his mind.

Eventually, after far too long, the car was clean and the oil was changed. Usually Ben would rap on the hood to let the driver know they were good to go, but something told him that if he tried hitting the hood of Pryde’s car, he’d be in deep shit. So instead he just waved to get Mitaka’s attention, gave him a thumbs-up and gestured broadly to the car to indicate it was done. He received a nod in return, and he kicked the car into reverse to start pulling out of the forecourt.

The Aston Martin narrowly missed colliding with Han and Finn, who were just arriving back from their last callout of the day, the thick tyres of Han’s truck completely caked in thick mud and fallen foliage. Finn let out a low whistle as he jumped down from the cab, shaking his head in disbelief. Han climbed down after him, raising an eyebrow. “Who the hell was _that?_ ” he asked, coming to glance at the copy of the invoice form on the desk.

“That,” Ben said, taking a deep breath and unwrapping the rag from around his hand to inspect the state of his bleeding knuckles. “Was Armie’s new husband.”

* * *

Han had let them all off early, citing the fact that there was a storm blowing fast into town and he wanted them all to be back home and locked in before it hit. They were right on the edge of tornado alley, so while it rarely ever got bad enough for them to need to lock down in the basement and barricade windows, it also wasn’t a smart idea to be wandering around late when they’d had plenty of pre-warning things were about to get messy.

Ben had arrived home still in a daze, and after soaking his hand in salt water for ten minutes to flush it out and wrapping it in a proper length of stretchy bandage, he managed to scrape together a bowl of soup and grilled cheese with what he had left over in the cabinets. He got distracted enough by the process of hauling sandbags out to protect his front and back door from flooding that he almost completely forgot about the card in his pocket, and didn’t remember it was there until it came time to undress for bed that night. The card fell out onto the carpet of his bedroom, and he spent a long time just standing there staring at it.

He took a shower to give himself more time to mull it over, going back and forth on what he should do. While he shampooed his hair, he convinced himself that he should ignore the card completely and not open up whatever can of worms was waiting for him if he actually took the bait and got involved. By the time he had to condition, he’d talked himself into a total 180 and decided he should definitely call Armie and welcome him back to the town. When he got out of the shower, he was no clearer on his decision than when he’d got in.

Ben sighed and went to go sit on the edge of his bed, his leg jittering anxiously as he stared at the card on his nightstand. He should call. If for no other reason than the fact that the big house was very isolated from the rest of the town, and if both Armie and Pryde had been living in a country where extreme weather just wasn’t an issue, it would only be the neighbourly thing to do to make sure they were properly equipped for the storm.

_Nice one, Solo, make out like you give a shit what happens to that grim old bastard._

He was dialling the number before he’d really even made up his mind. His hands were sweating as he held his phone to his ear, breath caught in his throat and heart thudding so hard he could practically hear it.

The line rang for far too long, and he was almost going to give up and put the phone down until he suddenly heard it connect.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Hello?” Armie’s voice. He sounded just the same as Ben remembered, clear and honeyed and beautiful. There was a beat of silence, and then, more quietly, “…Ben?”

The sound of his name in Armie’s mouth knocked Ben flat out, and he had to curl in on himself to cope with the clench in his chest, closing his eyes for a minute. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend this was normal. They were in high school again, and they were both in their bedrooms on the phone to each other, quietly so Armie’s father wouldn’t overhear, talking until one or both of them fell asleep with the call still connected.

It took him a minute to make sure his voice would actually work, and when he spoke, it came out broken. “Armie,” he choked eventually, and he heard Armie’s soft little intake of breath on the other end of the line. “Armie, I…”

The phone crackled once, and then beeped three times at him, signalling the call had disconnected. Ben felt the loss of it immediately and the backs of his eyes stung from the rejection within an instant, but then the lights around him all went out at once, plunging him into darkness. He got up and used his phone torch to fumble to the window, drawing back the drapes to look outside. Sure enough, the sky was alight with forks of bright lightning, and the deep roll of thunder followed seconds later. It must have hit the power plant, and the cell tower too, to knock out the signal. But even standing in his pitch-black room, Ben couldn’t bring himself to worry about the weather. Armie had wanted to talk to him, he’d picked up the phone. _He’d picked up the phone._

Ben went to the kitchen and grabbed one of the chairs from his small dining table, coming back and positioning it at the window in his bedroom so he could look out and watch the lightning. He fetched a couple of candles too, just so he could see his way around, and set them on his nightstand to light them. Finally, he scrolled through the few playlists he had already downloaded to his phone, since the little icon in the top corner was telling him he had no connection whatsoever, WiFi or cell or otherwise.

There was one song in particular he was looking for. Years ago, the last time the town had experienced a storm of what his uncle used to call ‘biblical proportions’, Ben and Armie had driven to a hill just on the outskirts of town and parked up to watch the lightning and rainclouds close in. Armie had initially been apprehensive, but Han – eager to have them out of the house for a night so he and Leia could be alone for once – had assured them that, as long as they stayed in the truck and didn’t go wandering about outside like idiots, they’d be safe. The truck acted as a Faraday cage, he said, and they’d be completely protected inside it. Ben still didn’t know all those years later if he quite believed him, but they hadn’t died that night, so he had no reason to question him. They’d packed out the cab of the truck with blankets and taken a thermos of tomato soup with them, and the pair of them had sat there with Ben’s old CD player in the passenger seat footwell for music, since the radio wasn’t picking up any signal in the storm and neither of them found the 60s and 70s songs too romantic, anyway. They’d sat there all night, Armie leaning over the centre console to rest his head on Ben’s shoulder and his hand on Ben’s knee as Ben’s hand absently stroked through his hair. At some point they’d discovered that Ben’s one CD – which he’d burned himself off the computer specially for the occasion after lovingly compiling a playlist on Napster full of songs he thought Armie would like – had a scratch on it, and they were forced to replay the same three songs over and over from the beginning of the CD to avoid it jumping. Two of them he’d now mostly forgotten, but one had always stuck in his mind as being a clear reminder of that night, of sitting there and kissing Armie under the lightning storm like it was a fireworks show.

He managed to find it now, putting it on and turning his phone volume up halfway before tossing it onto his bed, simulating the distant effect they’d had from keeping the CD player in the footwell. Outside, the lightning branched out across the sky, and the thunder rolled in closer, a cacophony of drums and cymbals over the whole town.

And he wondered, vaguely, if Armie was sitting up in the house doing the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo. First, let me apologise for how long it's taken me to get this chapter up. I'm currently two weeks (!!!!!!) away from finishing my master's degree, and it's been so hectic trying to get everything finished. I'm still not totally done, but I just really needed a break from academic writing to write something I actually enjoy. I know this chapter is a little shorter than the other two, but the next one should be more interesting so I really just wanted to get this one out of the way! Once my master's is done I should be able to update MUCH more frequently, so I just want to thank you all for being so lovely and patient in the meantime, and for reading and leaving kudos and commenting! 
> 
> If you want to see what Pryde's car looks like, this is is: https://aml-prod-images.azureedge.net/media/images/default-source/heritage/past-models/db4gt_exterior1.jpg?sfvrsn=d93067f9_2&width=960&format=webp&quality=75
> 
> I also want to start a playlist for this fic! Every chapter I'll update it with the relevant songs, so you can listen along and get the vibes I'm trying to go for. Here goes : 
> 
> Twist and Shout - The Beatles (Chapter One - the song on the truck radio when Ben is driving to the garage)   
> Too Afraid to Love - The Black Keys (Chapter One - the song Phasma puts on the jukebox at Maz's to tease Ben)  
> Love Is Blue - Marty Robbins (Chapter Three - the song on the radio at the garage when Ben and Rose are working)  
> White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes (Chapter Three - the song Ben listens to while watching the lightning, and that he and Armie listened to on their storm-spotting date)
> 
> Please please please drop me a comment to let me know what you think! Thank you so much for reading! <3


	4. Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: we see one side of a difficult phone conversation between Armie and Pryde, that leaves Armie upset. There are very brief and very vague allusions to Armie's history of abuse from Brendol.

Over the course of the following week, the initial excitement of having Armie’s number was somewhat squashed by the fact that the cell tower remained completely fried, and as a result the town remained a null, dead space for service that had everyone who passed through on their way to bigger and better places muttering curses under their breath and loudly thanking god they didn’t have to _live_ in a place so backward. It was the first week of September now, and with most kids going back to school soon a lot of families were using the final week off as their last chance to squeeze in a road trip or a vacation before everything ground down to a slow, boring stop again. Ben couldn’t put a number on the amount of cars that had stopped by the garage to fill up with gas that he’d never seen before in his life, usually with a flustered, tense-looking dad in khakis behind the wheel who’d stalk up to the counter and ask to use the landline while they waited. Ben had been privy to conversations with babysitters, hotels, campsites, car rentals, doctors – Han said they should start charging to use the phone, but considering their gas prices were already too high as the only station in town, Ben thought that the arguments it would entail would be more trouble than it was worth for the sake of fifty cents a minute.

The lack of a personal phone did give Ben plenty of time to pause and evaluate what exactly he was doing. Rose had been unable to keep to herself the fact that Ben was now in possession of Armie’s number, apparently having seen the clandestine transaction between he and Mitaka occurring through the little glass windowpane in the office door. As soon as she’d told Han, Han’s big mouth had let it slip to Rey, who’d let it slip to Finn, who’d let it slip to Poe, who’d let it slip to Phasma, until he once again had his whole little support network rallying around him the same way he did when Armie had first left town all those years ago. It was driving Ben insane – as much as he understood their concern, and appreciated the fact they didn’t want to see him hurt again, he was a grown adult and the offending item in question was nothing more sinister than a _phone number_.

Their reactions had been mixed, and in line with almost exactly what he’d expected of them. Han had been wary, and said that although he couldn’t stop Ben doing what he wanted once the cell tower was fixed, he wasn’t going to let him use the landline at the garage for personal calls (“that was the rule before, it’s the same now, no special treatment.”) Ben did notice him spending much more time at the garage now, sending Finn or Rose out to walk Chewie midday and forcing himself to stay awake with coffee instead of succumbing to his afternoon couch naps so he could be alert enough to man the phone himself. Poe had repeated the entire talk he’d given him before about keeping himself safe and remembering how bad things had gotten before, only now he sounded a little more hysterical, as if Armie were slowly sinking his hooks into Ben and Poe had limited time to save him by preaching at him. Finn and Rose didn’t seem to want to get involved, both of them clearly convinced that between the others they had it covered, and that more voices added to the cacophony already talking at him would do nothing but irritate him. It was a smart choice, on their part.

Phasma had also been predictable, but in a way that was oddly reassuring. She’d been curious about the man who’d given Ben the phone number, wanting to know more about him. Clearly she was trying to make up her mind whether or not to trust him, which always seemed to be Phasma’s first train of thought when it came to new people. Not anything so banal as getting to know them, no, she wanted to get deep into whether or not she considered them to be safe. She seemed satisfied by the fact that Mitaka was, by all accounts, a shy, timid man clearly more invested in helping Armie deliver secret messages than in contributing to what Phasma had already convinced herself was Armie’s imprisonment up in the big house. Then she’d asked to see the business card itself, and had spent a minute grimacing at Pryde’s business information on the front before flipping it over to read the back.

“Monday to Saturday?” she’d asked, squinting at what Armie had written. “What does that mean?”

Ben had shrugged, since he truthfully didn’t know. He’d taken it to be a schedule – call any time from Monday to Friday, don’t call on Sundays. _Why_ Sundays were off-limits, exactly, he had no idea. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to find out. He felt like he’d already seen too much of Armie’s personal life, and all he’d done Eventually Phasma had taken a photo of the business card, shushing Ben’s protest by saying that she just wanted it in case of emergencies. Ben didn’t know what that meant, but when Phasma made up her mind about something there was no arguing with her, so he let it happen without complaint. After all, if there was anyone he could trust with something personal of Armie’s, it was her.

He’d done his own soul-searching about the entire situation, too, independent of his friends’ well-meaning but slightly overbearing guidance. The morning after the lightning storm he’d convinced himself that calling Armie had been a moment of weakness, and that he was definitely going against the promise he made to Poe and Phasma when he said he’d be careful. Because, really, calling Armie wasn’t being careful. It wasn’t even being cautious. Calling Armie on a private number that he’d gone to considerable lengths to get to him without his husband finding out was like diving headfirst into a swimming pool filled with hot lava and expecting not to get burned. The whole thing definitely didn’t feel as casual as he’d been trying to play it off as.

Because the fact was, he and Armie had been close. It wasn’t possible to overstate how close they’d been, how much they’d cared for each other, loved each other. A lot of times when teenagers announce they’re engaged, and decide that they’re going to get married right out of high school, it’s a terrible idea. A lot of the time there’s a teen pregnancy behind it, or the relationship has burned very bright and intense for all of two months and got them thinking that marriage is the right thing for them. A lot of times it’s almost laughable, and they come to their senses after graduation and realise that they don’t want to be tied down all through college and the relationship falls apart within weeks of throwing their caps in the air.

That wasn’t the case for Ben and Armie. They understood each other in a way Ben hadn’t ever expected to find with anyone, and he knew that Armie opened up with him in a way he had never done with anyone else. They trusted each other completely, they were each the first person the other would want to go to with any news, good or bad, in any situation. Ben’s family had enveloped Armie into their ranks like one of their own, Leia leaping on the opportunity to show him some real care after it became apparent that Brendol and Maratelle had been treating him like shit his whole life.

It wasn’t all clichéd – they weren’t each other’s firsts for everything, they hadn’t fallen completely in love at first sight. Ben had developed a crush on Armie the first time they spoke, but Armie had been shy and reserved for the first year of their friendship, and even after he’d warmed up it was clear he was anxious about taking things further. Ben still, to this day, blamed Brendol for that. He’d poisoned him against the idea of a relationship with another boy the same way he’d poisoned him against becoming friends with people in a lower tax bracket than them. During that time, Ben had his first kiss with somebody else, and later on down the line gave another boy a very fumbling and messy handjob in a shed at a party. By the time he and Armie finally had their first kiss, he was considerably more experienced than him, though he’d never looked back once he felt the press of Armie’s lips against his own.

They’d been very, very serious about getting married. They didn’t take it lightly, and although Ben’s family had been apprehensive at first, they’d soon realised that they weren’t going to talk them out of it, and that there wasn’t really any need to. Ben was demonstrating more responsibility and maturity in that time than he ever had before, working a part-time job at the café in town on the weekends and picking up hours at the garage during the summers too. Armie’s father wouldn’t allow him to get a part-time job of his own, claiming it would distract him from his studies and that it was vulgar for a teenager to work, something reserved exclusively for the ‘working classes’. To try and compensate and pull his weight, Armie had taken to doing Ben’s homework for him in order to relieve some of the pressure so Ben could work his shifts without worrying about school. The size of their savings pot grew, with Han and Leia contributing varying sums as birthday and Christmas gifts for the pair of them. Ben sliced some off the top of the savings to buy Armie his engagement ring, a simple gold band with a single, small diamond set into the centre, and two smaller emeralds nestled either side of it. He’d claimed to like it because it matched Armie’s eyes, though really it was the cheapest thing in the town’s one antique shop, and they’d just got lucky that it also happened to be pretty.

By the time Armie left town, they had enough saved up for their wedding, which they’d already decided would be a very small ceremony at the town’s tiny chapel attended by just Ben’s family and their little handful of friends, followed by an outdoor reception down at the lake where everyone could just bring a lot of food and drink and lay it all out to share. There was also enough for the first couple of months’ rent, though they hadn’t got as far as being able to look at places that were available. It had been the next thing on their to-do list, and the day that Armie came to Ben’s door to announce he was leaving for England, they’d been planning on taking a drive round town to check some houses out.

Ben never found out if Armie had told Brendol about his plans to marry Ben.

So now, Ben knew that messing around with Armie’s number wasn’t something he could take lightly. He’d been completely devoted to him, ready to spend the rest of his life with him, and from everything he’d heard and read and seen in his life, that sort of commitment didn’t translate well into being “just friends.” He knew how he felt the night he saw Armie in the bar, how the breath had been knocked out of him just at the mere sight of that soft red hair and those clear green eyes. Clearly, _clearly_ , he wasn’t as well-adjusted as he thought he was. The feelings were still very much there, albeit buried under layers and layers of all the awful hurt that had come after him. Poe had been absolutely right when he’d said that Ben was liable to getting hurt again. Because he knew, if Armie asked him for anything, no matter what it was, Ben would go to him without hesitation. Armie had him wrapped around his little finger without even knowing it, and although he knew he couldn’t blame Armie for a move that his father had forced him to make, that didn’t mean Armie didn’t still hold the power to crush him once again in his pale, delicate hands.

Fortunately for Ben, there was one thing in early September that was providing a reliable and much-needed distraction: his birthday. When he’d been little his birthday had been the highlight of his year, partly because he enjoyed the gifts and attention and food and partly because it started the countdown in his mind to even more exciting holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Leia used to make him a cake from scratch until the age of about sixteen, when the tradition had fallen off in favour of something store-bought for no other reason than the fact Ben was well on his way to marrying someone and a homemade cake felt like something of a childish tradition to uphold. When he was younger he’d had parties at his house with the usual games like pass-the-parcel and musical chairs, but once he’d got older – and, crucially, when Armie left – his birthday celebrations had become much more toned down and scaled back. Now they were all adults, he and his friends usually just went to Maz’s for drinks and took turns buying him rounds, ensuring he never had to open his wallet at any point of the night in lieu of any physical gifts. It wasn’t something he really made a fuss of any more, preferring to just let it pass by in a lowkey way. The night usually ended with his friends stumbling home drunk, and Ben would go back to his parents’ house and sit on the porch with Han, drinking a beer and throwing sticks for Chewie to chase and awkwardly reminiscing about birthdays past. A particular favourite story was his fifth birthday, when he’d been given his first ever bike, for a number of reasons – nobody had been fighting that year, Luke hadn’t gone full hippie yet, and crucially, five-year-old Ben hadn’t even known Armie existed. It was a safe year to talk about. Neutral.

All of which was why he was particularly surprised when Phasma decided she wanted to make an occasion of it that year. She’d recently started dating a woman who worked as a maître d’ at a fancy new restaurant in the next town over, who she’d apparently met while scouting a suitable gym to sign up to since the one in town, according to her, “only hosts classes for people over the age of fifty.” The woman, whose name was apparently Unamo, and had said she could get Phasma and some guests in with a discounted rate if they ever wanted to come try out the food. Ben had been reluctant at first, comfortable already with how they usually celebrated, but she’d been insistent.

“It’s your _twenty-fifth birthday_ , Ben, come on! A quarter of your life! We have to do something special, don’t be boring.”

There really was no arguing with her. She had Rose and Rey on board with only the lightest bit of convincing, especially once she told them that the restaurant had a dress code that required formal eveningwear. She persuaded Finn by showing him the menu online, and Poe, who’d always seen Ben’s scaling-back of his birthday as another step down the slippery slope of depression after Armie’s departure and who’d been advocating for years to do something more fun, agreed without even needing any coaxing.

Which was how Ben now found himself seated at a table in a restaurant that Leia would describe as ‘upscale’, and Han would more bluntly dub as ‘posh’, if they’d been there – Ben had asked them if they wanted to come, but neither of them had seemed particularly enthusiastic. Leia had begged off due to how busy she was with work, which could well have been true in all fairness to her, and Han outright said he didn’t fancy getting dressed up to eat pricey food. Ben had to agree with him there, and he secretly envied them the ability to decline the offer and stay at home.

Unamo had greeted them at the door when they’d arrived as a group, the majority of them having shared cars to get there. The only slight issue was that Phasma, who’d fortunately been able to message them now that the cell tower was finally back in action, had been delayed with a problem at work and would be a little late arriving. They’d sent Poe in first to deal with Unamo, the rest of them admittedly intimidated by her incredibly sharp cheekbones and the almost unnaturally piercing blue eyes, and he’d managed to get them shown to their table without any fuss. They were issued with menus and informed that the discount Unamo had managed to arrange for them would get them 20% off their final check, which she said in a lowered voice, presumably so none of the other tables would hear and demand the same treatment. She needn’t have worried – the music crooning out over the hidden speakers around the room effectively drowned out any noise from the other diners without being so overpowering as to stifle conversation. Everything seemed expertly thought out to the tiniest detail.

The table itself was nice, and felt secluded from the rest of the restaurant by a glossy wooden railing that ran along the back of the bench seating and acted as a sort of partition between them and the other diners. Each place had already been laid with two different sizes of wine glass before they even sat down, and there were two ice buckets with bottles of wine chilling inside – something Phasma had arranged to be ordered ahead of time, Unamo told them. It was the wine that started to raise Ben’s suspicions. Phasma was a good friend, and always had been, and she had an unfair reputation as being brash and uncaring because of her tendency to be a little loud and lacking in a filter. But no matter how generous Ben really knew her to be, two bottles of expensive wine already ready and waiting in ice buckets was a stretch. She was planning something, and he felt like an idiot for not realising sooner that there was an ulterior motive for all this.

Ben tugged at the collar of his shirt, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He’d dressed up in the nicest clothes he owned, a black suit with a crisp, pale blue shirt and a darker blue tie on top. He’d admittedly had to drive by his parents’ house on the way to Poe’s house to pick him up, so he could duck inside and get Leia to help him tie it into a suitably neat knot. He’d also done his best to tame his hair, and he’d shaved. He’d also put on cologne, from the bottle he reserved for dates. That was what Phasma was doing. She had to be. She was going to waltz in trailing some set-up behind her, probably someone else from high school, or worse yet, someone from her new goddamn gym. He couldn’t believe he’d blindly sleepwalked into what was now so _obvious_ to him as a very elaborately orchestrated date. Of course. Trust Phasma to believe she could do a better job than Poe at finding him love and go to such ridiculous lengths to prove it.

He didn’t know if he wanted to run or stay and confront her. He ended up just staring resolutely down at his menu, cheeks hot, trying to make sense of the food options in front of him. A lot of it was in another language – Italian, it was Italian. He and Armie had gone to an Italian restaurant in the city on one of their first ever dates. Ben had been desperately trying to impress him by going all the way out there, even though they’d spent ages sat in traffic on the freeway there and back. He’d been just as confused by the menu options then, and Armie had laughed softly at him and pointed out various things he liked with his eyes bright and full of fond amusement, saying, “It’s good, I promise!” and agreeing to go halves on whatever they ordered so they could try a whole bunch of different things. It was one of his most treasured memories of their early time together, and it definitely wasn’t an experience he was looking to replicate with anyone else.

Unamo reappeared at the table after a while to take their orders for their appetisers. Ben had decided by that point that the easiest way for him to get through the evening was to start on the wine, and he was in the middle of pouring himself a very large glass of red when it came time for him to take his turn. “Uh,” he said dumbly, blinking like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He glanced back down at the menu for a second, settling on the first thing that his eyes caught sight of, “The bruschetta. Please.” He guiltily tipped the wine bottle back up the right way and replaced it back on the table, taking a sip from his glass to try and bring down the amount and make it look less questionable to anyone who else who looked his way.

He was still having trouble putting his finger on exactly why he felt so uneasy by the time Phasma finally arrived. The waiter had just finished putting their appetisers down on the table and making sure their ice buckets were properly filled when the doors swung open and she slinked in, looking admittedly very glamorous in a champagne-coloured dress and very dark red lipstick. Ben presumed she was keen to look good for Unamo, who looked suitably impressed as she came over to take Phasma’s coat and press a kiss to each of her cheeks. It was almost enough to distract Ben from who walked in right behind Phasma. _Almost._

If Armie had looked beautiful the night at the bar, he looked nothing short of stunning now. As he shrugged out of his coat and handed it over to put away in the cloakroom, he exposed an expertly tailored suit in a pale grey colour that complemented his hair and softened the sharp lines of his slender frame, offset even more by the very, very dark green tie he wore round his neck against his crisp white shirt. The only thing that damaged the image was just how self-conscious he looked, although Ben could _completely_ sympathise, given the fact that he himself was currently sat there with his jaw hanging open and his glass frozen halfway to his mouth. 

Phasma swanned over to the table and beamed at the assembled guests with as much sweeping confidence as someone would have if it were their own birthday. That was fine by Ben – she could have the whole day if she wanted, he was right on the verge of giving up and mentally clocking out for the rest of the night. He’d managed to put his wine glass back down on the table without spilling anything, but as far as the rest of his motor functions went, he was still waiting for them to come back online. All he could do was follow Armie with his eyes as he trailed behind Phasma to the table, looking back and forth around him as though seeking out someone he knew amongst the crowd of other diners.

“Sorry I’m late!” Phasma said, waiting for Finn and Rey to stand up so she could shuffle past them and take her seat at the table. Armie, his face burning red, followed after her, mumbling apologies under his breath until he was finally able to sit down. The table was shaped like an oval, ending in a narrow curve, which meant that Armie and Ben were left sitting half-opposite each other, half-next to each other, close enough for Ben to smell a very light, pleasant cologne and the exact same brand of hair pomade he’d used when they’d been together. His heart ached painfully in his chest and he grabbed for his wine glass again, taking a long drink while his other hand gripped the bench seat _hard_ under the table.

Phasma was surveying the plate in front of her, picking up her fork to push around the food there. “Oh, this looks good, I’m starving.” She glanced up for a second and turned to Armie, waving a dismissive hand at the empty space in front of him. “Oh, don’t worry Armie, Ben ordered for you.”

Ben blinked, eyes wide. It was all he could do to stop himself choking on the gulp of wine he’d just swallowed. All eyes around the table were on him now. “I. Uh. What?”

Phasma looked exasperated, glaring at him like he’d personally violated some sort of pact they had together. “You didn’t order for him?” she muttered through gritted teeth, as if Armie wasn’t right there beside her and couldn’t hear the entire conversation.

Ben shook his head, feeling very much like a kid in school getting scolded by their teacher. His face had gone hot, and his palms were starting to get slick. “Um, no…no, I didn’t…” What the _hell_ was going on? Clearly, everyone else around the table was just as confused as he was. At the other end of the oval Poe looked like he was ready to leap onto the table and go for Phasma’s throat, his hand clenched around his fork like a weapon. There was a muscle jumping in his jaw from how hard he was clenching it. Finn’s hand was on his wrist in a subtle effort to calm him down, but by the way he was looking at Ben, he also had no clue what was happening and was just waiting to see how Ben would react. Rey was alternating between glaring warning daggers at Poe across the table and glancing over at Ben with concern written plain on her face. It was only Rose who wasn’t staring at them, because she was too busy looking down at her lap, avoiding eye contact with anyone round the table.

Phasma rounded on her, going as far as to rise out of her seat. “You were supposed to make sure he ordered two!” she cried, throwing her hands up in the air. A few of the diners from the tables nearest to them glanced up to look their way, and Ben wished _desperately_ that she would sit down. He was positive his face was beet red, and the last thing he wanted was for Phasma to cause a scene in the _extremely_ upmarket restaurant and draw attention to it.

“I thought I was ordering two, one for me and one for you!” Rose protested. “How was I supposed to know he had to order two as well?” So that explained it, then. They were in it together – Phasma had found the weak point of the group, the one person who hadn’t been privy to Ben’s meltdown six years ago and who therefore didn’t know any better to think this was a terrible idea, and she’d gone for the kill. Why on earth she thought this was appropriate was another matter entirely. It felt like she’d done a complete 180 from the stern warnings she’d joined Poe in delivering two him just over a week ago, and he wondered what the hell had made her suddenly decide to change her tune so drastically. Mostly, he just wished she’d _talked_ to him about it before acting on what he was sure was a perfectly reasonable impulse to her, but to everyone else looked completely insane.

Armie had turned paler than usual, rigid in his seat as though he thought that staying still would render him invisible. Ben was going to have to say something. If for no other reason than the fact he had to save he and Armie the continued embarrassment – he couldn’t stand seeing Armie all shrunken down like that.

“Phas!” Clearly she hadn’t expected him to talk, let alone do so with _volume_ , and she looked away from Rose towards him with surprise. “Look. It’s fine, he can just have mine. I’m _really_ not that hungry, I don’t need one.” That much, at least, was true. He didn’t think he could honestly think of a better appetite-killer than his ex-fiancé showing up at his birthday dinner and his friend making a public spectacle of herself over an appetiser. He felt bad for talking about Armie like he wasn’t there, but he just wanted the whole ordeal to be over.

Phasma huffed and sat down, sending a sidelong scowl at Rose. Fortunately the food seemed to distract her enough that she didn’t feel the need to make any further comments, something Ben was exceedingly grateful for. Now if only the others would all stop gawping at them like zoo exhibits, maybe his face could return to its normal colour and he could stop feeling as though he were about to throw up.

Armie shook his head and tilted his head imperceptibly towards Ben, not that it mattered since the rest of the table was almost definitely hanging on their every word. “It’s really okay, I don’t want to take your food on your birthday…” he said quietly. Armie wasn’t as fortunate as him – his skin was so pale that the blush was still showing up strong, and he sounded a little strained.

“’Tidge, please.” Fuck. _Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_. What the hell had he done. Not the _nickname_ , not now. Ben swallowed a lump in his throat, wishing he’d just got up and run away from the restaurant earlier when he’d had the chance. He took as deep a breath as he could manage, looking at Armie imploringly. “Please. Just. Take it.” Phasma definitely wasn’t going to let it go unless they reached a solution, and the entire ordeal had already been painful enough, he didn’t need to draw it out.

If Armie had been caught off guard by the nickname, he did a very good job of hiding it. Save for a slight intake of breath that was barely perceptible under the neat fabric of his suit, he didn’t react, just fixed his face into a small polite smile and drew the plate forward. He left it sitting between them, reaching for his napkin to fold it over his lap. “We can share,” he decided, and his tone suggested that would be the end of the discussion. “Have half each.”

It was enough like that date in the city that Ben spent the remainder of the appetiser course with the backs of his eyes stinging. It was a shame – the food _was_ good, there was no denying. Fresh tomatoes drizzled in oil and basil, crisp dough, everything was perfect. And yet each bite felt like it was sucking all the moisture out of Ben’s mouth, and was like sandpaper to swallow. Armie barely looked at him after their brief exchange about the food, and already Ben was mourning the loss of his voice. He’d only heard two words during their painfully short phone call earlier in the week, but it was enough to get him addicted again. And now he was hearing whole sentences, he knew he was done for. For the most part Armie just talked to Phasma, but Ben found himself straining to overhear what they were saying – not to eavesdrop, not because he was curious about the _content_ of the conversation, but purely because he wanted to hear his voice. Rose was doing her best to engage him in a conversation of their own, and although he felt bad that he was clearly distracted and barely committed to it, it was fairly obviously to everyone that he’d stopped concentrating on the rest of them the minute Armie had walked through the door.

Eventually, around dessert, Phasma evidently decided it was time for her to start meddling again. Ben had surrendered his half-eaten plate to the waiter after pushing the pasta around with his fork and barely eating anything, and he was debating whether he could excuse himself to the bathroom and escape when suddenly Phasma broke off her conversation with Armie mid-sentence and said, “Oh! Poe, I forgot, I wanted to ask you something…” and at the exact same moment, Rose leaned over the table diagonally to engage Finn in what sounded like a very forced conversation about his car.

It had the desired effect of leaving Ben and Armie both without anyone to talk to…except for each other. For a while they both ignored each other, each of them finding a fixed point to stare at over the other’s shoulder and refusing to look away. Ben spent a good few minutes watching the cars roll past outside, trying to work out if it was worse to stay silent or to try and engage in some pitifully bland small talk. At one point he shifted in his seat, full of restless, nervous energy, and ended up bumping his leg against Armie’s accidentally beneath the table. “Shit, sorry,” he mumbled, drawing his legs in closer to himself and almost wheezing with relief when the waiter leaned down between them to place their desserts on the table. He’d chosen gelato, which he hoped would at least help with the fact he felt incredibly overheated.

“It’s fine,” Armie said softly, nodding his thanks to the waiter as his own food was given to him. Gelato too, strawberry. Ben could have guessed it without even seeing it – he used to tease Armie mercilessly that he’d match his food to his hair whenever he could. There was the smallest ghost of a smile on Armie’s lips, and Ben wished it would get bigger, brighter. He needed to see it more than he needed to breathe. “This is ridiculous,” he said instead, shaking his head and looking up at Ben properly. Ben hadn’t quite been prepared to feel the full force of those emerald eyes on his own, and it rendered him momentarily incapable of a reply.

Overheard, the song floating out of the speakers changed to something with the vague aura of Americana that Ben had come to expect from both his town and every town surrounding it, somewhat out of place in an Italian restaurant but oddly comforting in its sheer unpretentiousness. He swallowed a lump in his throat and gave a jerky nod in agreement, twisting his napkin in his lap. “I know,” he said. “I know. I’m sorry, Phasma picked this place, usually I don’t…”

“No.” Armie reached across the small space between them and put his hand over Ben’s, gently. His fingers were cool to the touch and felt like heaven against his own overheated skin, but as soon as Armie realised what he’d done, he withdrew again whippet-fast and folded both his hands back in his lap. “I just meant,” he continued, hesitantly. “That it’s ridiculous we’re sat here not talking. We can talk. If you’d like.”

Ben blinked. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but talking…talking was probably manageable. “Right,” he said, huffing out a breath and shovelling some of his gelato into his mouth to buy him some time to come up with something decent to say. Whatever he did, he knew he needed to steer the conversation away from anything to do with Pryde and Armie’s marriage to him. He didn’t want to know specifics, he didn’t _need_ to know specifics, and he had no intention of pretending to be interested if Armie started talking about it.

He was still busy giving himself brain freeze when Armie said, politely, “Phasma told me you’re working full-time at the garage now, with Han. That must be nice.”

Just like that. As though they were strangers just meeting for the first time, trying to learn the basics about one another. As if Armie hadn’t once spent whole afternoons sat on an empty workbench at the garage with Ben’s second-hand leather jacket draped round his shoulders to keep him warm, hands wrapped around a mug of tea while he watched Ben take apart and put back together the motorcycle Han had salvaged for him from the nearby scrap yard. Maybe talking would be harder than he thought.

“Uh, yeah. Just made sense, you know? I already had all the training and it’s good having a boss who isn’t a total asshole.” Jesus, what was _happening_ to him? It had never been a secret that he and his family were less well-off than Armie and his; despite Leia’s comfortable job in the mayor’s office and the fact Han owned the garage, nothing could compete with the salary Brendol had made at the bank, or the old money they’d brought with them from England. But the point was, it had never _felt_ like a competition before. He’d never been intimidated by Armie’s nice clothes, his neatness, his posture, his mannerisms. He might have been awe of them when he was much younger, but he’d never felt inadequate in the face of them. Now, though, he was self-conscious of everything he did and wore and said. His hands felt too big and clumsy, and as bittersweet as it had been to feel Armie’s touch on his skin again, something about it made him feel as though he were taking up too much space. His vocabulary suddenly felt too crass, like it betrayed something about him that somehow explained why Armie left, why he’d done what he did in marrying Pryde. He cleared his throat, tips of his ears hot. “So, uh. What have you been doing? Y’know, back in England?”

Armie gave him a little smile, though it was tight-lipped. He was holding back, Ben realised, for some reason he didn’t understand. “Well,” he said, taking a deep breath and neatly rearranging the spoon beside his bowl so it lined up better with the rest of the tableware. Fidgeting, too. The way he was acting reminded Ben so clearly of the way he’d been when he’d very first moved into town, years and years ago, it was almost eerie. “I went to Oxford, actually. I got my master’s in Engineering Science.”

“I…wow.” Ben wouldn’t have expected anything less, but hearing it was still impressive. Armie had always been smart – he’d had private tutors and the best books and equipment that money could buy, of course, but none of that could replicate natural talent, and Armie had that in spades. “So, Engineering Science, that’s like…? What is that?” He had a decent idea already, but it was such a _safe_ avenue of conversation that he wanted to feed it for as long as he could. Nothing too personal, nothing emotional, just university. University was neutral, and at least he didn’t have to pretend to be interested. He’d always liked hearing the way Armie talked when he got passionate about something, the way his voice sped up a little, got an octave higher, the way his eyes got brighter and he gestured more with his hands.

He was doing it now, as he launched into an explanation of exactly what his course had entailed and the various projects he’d been working on. For a while Ben was just pleased to have him to himself, but before long he could tell Rose was itching to get in on the conversation and ask Armie her dozens of engineering questions, so he was happy to sit back and just watch them talk while he finished off his food. It felt almost normal, and Rose wasn’t harbouring the same cautious apprehension of Armie that the rest of his friends were, so he felt as though he somehow didn’t have to be as protective of him when it came to her. She wouldn’t suddenly come out with some awful question about why Armie left, or if he realised how much he’d hurt Ben – both of which were questions he feared Poe would ask, if Finn and Rey gave him the chance.

Through all of it, Ben couldn’t help but wonder… _why?_ Armie had always had potential, and by the sounds of it, throughout his time at university that potential had just been realised. So why did he need Pryde? What did Pryde _give_ him that his brilliant, wonderful mind couldn’t get for himself? It made no sense to him whatsoever.

By the time Unamo returned to deliver their check, Ben had finished off two more large glasses of wine and listened to Armie giving patient and detailed answers to every question Rose threw at him. It had been decided between them at some point during the meal, under Phasma’s instruction, that they’d split the check evenly to make things easier, with nobody particularly concerned about the suggestion given the fact Unamo had already managed to knock a decent amount of the cost down for them. Ben fished his card out of his beat-up wallet and tossed it onto the little silver tray along with the others, and he didn’t miss the card that Armie put down. It was sleek and grey, with scrolling script reading ‘Coutts’ in the top right-hand corner. He distinctly remembered seeing Armie carrying a card like that before, back in high school when he’d still been reliant on Brendol for his money. Phasma had told him once that it was a British bank in London used by the ultra-rich, which required account holders to deposit £500,000 in cash or have at least £5 million in assets to even open an account. Ben recalled what Mitaka had said at the garage about not having an American account set up yet, and sure enough, when he leaned forward to try and sneak a glance at the name on the card, he caught the ‘Mr E. Pryde’ in silver lettering across the front. Jesus Christ.

“Ben!” Poe was calling to him down the table, distracting him as Unamo took their cards away again to run them through the register. “Maz’s after this, yeah? Drinks?” He was grinning, and Ben wondered how much wine Finn and Rey had fed into him over the course of dinner to get him to relax and ease up about Armie’s presence. He felt bad that he’d barely spoken to him all evening, but the shape of the table didn’t exactly facilitate conversation too well unless he wanted to be yelling over people all night.

“Uh…yeah? Yeah, could do,” he called back, shrugging and finishing off the last bite of his gelato. It was still fairly early in the evening, although it was already pitch black outside. Maz’s would be open for another several hours yet, and there was still his yearly ritual of sitting and drinking with Han to consider too. But when he really thought about it, he just wasn’t in the mood. The food had been good, the wine even better, and he appreciated Phasma’s efforts to make his 25th something special despite her ulterior motives, but he didn’t think he had the mental energy required to keep going for the rest of the night. He felt about ready to admit defeat and crawl back to his parents’, where he could sit in companionable silence and not be accused of succumbing to some ever-looming threat of depression. 

Poe and the others were already preparing to leave, checking to make sure they had phones and wallets and keys, however before they could get as far as rising from the table Unamo returned holding one of their cards, reading off the back of it, “Excuse me, Mr…Pryde?” She pronounced it like ‘preed’, which gave Ben a momentary little burst of satisfaction.

Armie raised his hand slowly like a child answering their name in attendance. “Yes, that’s mine.”

Unamo held the card out for him with a slight grimace. “Your card has been declined. Do you have another way you’d like to pay?”

Armie’s face fell. Everyone was looking at him now, Ben included, even though he knew it wasn’t helping to just sit there and stare at him. Poe and Finn had their arms pulled halfway through the sleeves of their coats, and Rey was frozen with a wine glass poised in front her mouth, lips parted in surprise. Ben knew what they were all thinking – Armie had more money than all of them put together, why was this happening to _him_ , of all people?

Eventually he rose from the table, rather abruptly. “Excuse me,” he said tightly, and Ben stood up stiffly to let Armie move past him and get out of the booth. The light brush of him passing by made his knees weak, and he put out his hands to brace himself against the table as subtly as he could. All of them watched him leave, walking hurriedly but with perfect poise out into the corridor that led to both the restrooms and the adjoining hotel that was attached to and owned by the restaurant.

“Well,” Poe said, after a second had gone by in silence. “That was awkward.”

“ _Poe,_ ” Phasma snapped.

“What?!” Poe rolled his eyes and slumped back down in his seat, wrestling his other arm into his jacket. Rose pulled out her phone and stared down at it as if trying to manifest a message or an email or _anything_ else to occupy her, clearly desperate not to be a part of the conversation. Rey finished her wine and set about quietly discussing the route they were going to take home with Finn, since he’d been appointed the designated driver on the condition that he could have as much as he wanted once they got back to town and to the walkable safety of Maz’s.

Unable to stand the horrible, uncomfortable quiet, Ben cleared his throat and scrunched up his napkin on the table. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom while we wait. Be back in a minute.” He squeezed his way out past Phasma, whose expression had taken on a mix of confusion and irritation and concern that would have been comical if it wasn’t under the exact circumstances they were currently in, and took a deep breath as he was released out of the booth and into the spacious freedom of the restaurant floor.

He was pleased to find the restrooms empty when he nudged the door open, which gave him a chance to splash some cold water on his face and glare at himself in the mirror until he’d done a better job of calming down. Seeing his own red face right there, staring back at him, really did work wonders – nothing brought him back to reality more than seeing quite how ridiculous his large ears looked when you added bright red colouring to them.

Ben was about to leave to re-join their table when he suddenly heard Armie’s voice in the hallway, muffled by the restroom door but still unmistakable. Fuck. He didn’t want to eavesdrop, he knew it was beyond inappropriate and completely overstepping a line, but he couldn’t help it. For one thing he didn’t want to waltz out of the bathroom and directly past Armie while he was in the middle of something, and there was another part of him that was morbidly curious about what exactly was going on out there. So he crept a little closer to the door, leaning in until his forehead was almost touching the wood so he could hear Armie’s words a little clearer.

_“I thought we agreed clothes were fine. You’ve seen the weather here, I was always going to need to add things to…yes, of course it’s mine, what on Earth is that supposed to mean?”_

A pause, then a sharp intake of breath.

 _“So you’ve been looking at my_ receipts _, are you serious? It was_ one _thing. You can’t just cut me off! I ordered food, I have to_ pay _for it, what am I supposed to do?”_

More silence, then –

 _“Enric. No, don’t…Enric, come on,_ please _…tell me what I’m meant to do!”_

After that it went very quiet. Armie made a frustrated noise and there was a soft little ‘thump’ on the wall between the corridor and the restroom, followed by some footsteps that didn’t seem to be getting any quieter, suggesting Armie was pacing or walking in circles instead of going back out to the table to join the others.

Ben had no idea what to do. He likely would have stood there all night for lack of a better idea, and it was only the slow turn of the door handle that finally spurred him into action. He bolted for one of the cubicles and shut himself inside, willing himself to hold his breath. He knew it was Armie who entered just from the light scent of his cologne, and, unfortunately, the fact that he would know what Armie sounded like crying anywhere. Far too many times he’d had Armie come to Han and Leia’s house in the middle of the night after some sort of episode with Brendol, snotty and streaked with tears and making the same quiet, rapid breathing noises as he was making just then in the cubicle beside him. Ben’s every instinct was screaming at him to let Armie know that he was there and ask him what he could do to help, but he knew deep down that he’d probably be doing more harm than good. He had to remind himself that they weren’t together anymore, that Armie wouldn’t come to him voluntarily for help and would probably be incredibly embarrassed if Ben were to assume he wanted it.

And so, despite the fact it went against every fibre of his being, Ben used his chance to escape while Armie was in the cubicle and slipped out of the bathroom as fast as possible. He didn’t go straight back to the table, but instead paused by the register to quietly ask Unamo to run his card again and charge the last percent of the check still remaining to him. Maybe he couldn’t go as far as to help Armie the way he would have done years ago, but he could at least do this. He took his card back and put it away in his wallet, then wandered back over to the table attempting to appear as casual as possible.

“What was that?” Phasma asked, catching his arm and nodding towards the register.

Ben sighed. “I paid his share, okay? Just…don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m tired, I just wanna get out of here and head home.” He pulled on jacket, the same leather one he’d had for years. It was at odds with the rest of his clothes for the night, roughing up the rare smart look he’d managed to cultivate, but there wasn’t much he could do about it – he didn’t have anything fancier.

Armie emerged from the restroom a couple of minutes later. He’d clearly done his best to adjust himself as much as possible, his suit neatly straightened and his face fixed into a calm, polite smile. His eyes were red-rimmed, though Ben didn’t think he’d notice if he hadn’t been looking for it, if he hadn’t heard what he’d heard. “Sorry about that,” he said, his voice a couple of octaves higher than usual. He was forcing it, forcing the casual, unbothered attitude that Ben knew couldn’t be further from the truth. “I’ll just go and pay, I can give them cash – the bank always does this when you travel, they think everything is fraud.” It was a smooth lie, one Ben might almost have believed if he didn’t know any better.

Phasma reached out to squeeze Armie’s wrist gently, passing him his coat that she’d collected from the cloakroom. “Don’t worry about, it’s taken care of,” she said, and gave an almost imperceptible nod in Ben’s direction. Ben could have kicked her. He didn’t know what part of “don’t make a big deal out of it” she’d misunderstood, but he’d hoped that he’d insinuated that he didn’t want Armie to know about it. Evidently not.

Armie flushed red and gave a little nod, pulling on his coat and following the others as they filed out of the booth. It seemed that the episode with the payment had killed the mood for any further celebrations, which was at least one silver lining around the whole situation. Rey seemed to be falling asleep on her feet, and even Poe was looking a little dazed, yawning behind his hand when he thought nobody was glancing in his direction. They could easily do drinks another day, after all, and the night had been strange enough already without adding a cocktail of cheap beers and vodka mixers on top of it all. _That_ would just be tempting fate in a way that Ben didn’t want to mess with.

Outside in the small parking lot, the others divided themselves up into the two cars they’d brought with them. Finn would be driving Poe and Rey home, and Rose would be dropping off Ben, since her age excluded her from drinking along with the rest of them and she’d readily volunteered to be their second designated driver. It seemed that Phasma also planned on taking advantage of Rose’s car, as she climbed up into the passenger seat without hesitation and immediately stooped to remove her heels and toss them into the back seat.

“We took a cab here,” Armie explained, joining Ben in watching her make herself comfortable. The pair of them were the last to leave the restaurant, standing away from the glare of the cars’ headlights. The tip of Armie’s nose was already turning pink from the slight chill in the air, and he was rubbing his hands together to warm them up. “Oh. Before I forget, here.” He reached into his coat and drew out a flat black box, tied with a dark blue satin ribbon. “Happy birthday.” He held it out for him with a little smile, and an open expression full of hope.

Ben turned the box over in his hands, taken aback. “You didn’t have to,” he said, wishing his voice didn’t come out as such a croak. The others didn’t go in for gifts anymore, and although he usually got something from Leia and Han and Luke, it always felt like more of a formality and was generally something practical that he’d deliberately asked for – snow chains for the tyres on his truck, a new pair of headphones, a better coffee machine. He hadn’t received an unexpected, surprise gift in years – not since Armie left. “Thank you.” He carefully tucked the box inside his jacket, knowing he couldn’t open it in front of him unless he wanted to embarrass them both by getting overwhelmed with the myriad of emotions bouncing around inside him. He glanced up at the two cars, both of which now had their engines running. “Do you need a ride somewhere? You know the cab place stops running after 8, right? I’m sure Rose would drop you back off at the house…” It was one of the biggest drawbacks of the town – their one taxi company was a small family-run affair with only two cars and two drivers to its name, both of whom were getting a little old and limited their hours to between 10am and 8pm so they could get to sleep at a reasonable time. While Ben understood completely, it was also incredibly frustrating when it came to going anywhere outside of a walkable distance during the night.

Armie shook his head. “I know, I remember. It’s okay though, I’ve got it figured out.” He nodded, drawing his coat closer around himself and tucking his hands into his pockets. “Don’t worry about me.”

Ben wasn’t entirely sure if he believed him, but Phasma had leaned over Rose to aggressively beep the horn at him, and he knew he couldn’t keep them waiting much longer. “Okay…if you’re sure?”

Armie nodded. “Completely sure. Oh, and Ben?” He’d started to turn and walk away in the direction of the sidewalk, but he paused and turned around again with a little smile, soft and genuine and breathtakingly beautiful, “Thank you. For being okay with me coming tonight.”

It was all Ben could do to nod dumbly in response. What else could he do? He couldn’t very well tell Armie that seeing him in person, sitting beside him for hours, had been the best birthday gift he could possibly have asked for. He couldn’t tell him that hearing his voice and seeing him smile, even faintly, was like a balm on his soul that was beginning to fix a wound that had been open and sore for six years. Nodding was the safest way to avoid saying something he’d regret, something that would freak Armie out and push him away right when he was starting to get close again.

Ben walked back to Rose’s car and slid into the back seat, pointedly ignoring Phasma’s dramatic sigh of, “ _finally!_ ” coming from the front. As Rose pulled out of the parking lot and followed Finn onto the stretch of highway back towards town, Ben took advantage of the loss of the streetlights to take the gift box out of his pocket and rest it gently in his lap. He was acting like it was something precious, which to him, it was. It was Armie’s, something he’d taken the time to get for him, and that _made_ it precious as far as he was concerned. He carefully slipped the ribbon off the corners of the box and lifted the lid, running his fingers over what was inside. Neatly folded under a thin sheet of grey tissue paper was the softest scarf he’d ever felt in his life, so soft that it felt like his fingers were sliding over thin air when he touched it. It was a nice colour too, a deep dark blue that wouldn’t compete with anything in his admittedly muted wardrobe. It was perfect, right in time for the coming autumn months and the kind of thing he’d never have thought to buy for himself no matter how much he needed it.

Underneath the scarf there was a small card, the same pale grey as the tissue paper. Armie’s neat handwriting was front and centre, with just a short, simple message:

_Happy birthday Ben – A._

And then, just below the ‘A’, a small row of three ‘x’s in a neat little line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowwwww, another chapter!!! So fast!!! Honestly guys this is the one I've been dying to write, where our boys finally get to see each other in person again for longer than a split second. I hope you like it! There'll be plenty more angst to come in the future, but this one already felt like it was getting to be long enough at almost 10k words, so the rest of the angst will have to wait (absolutely wild how this single chapter is the same length as my whole dissertation). Also, apologises for any typos or weird grammar in this, it's almost 1am here and I was just so desperate to get it out tonight - rest assured I'll be going back through all chapters at some point and cleaning any mistakes up. Still, I really really hope you enjoyed reading this one, I had a LOT of fun writing it! Please please please comment and let me know what you're thinking about the story, it helps motivate me to write so much and it really makes my day, I treasure each and every single one of them! :D <3 
> 
> Updated playlist (one day I'll put these all in a YouTube playlist to make it easier but for now we're doing this):   
> \- Twist and Shout - The Beatles (Chapter One - the song on the truck radio when Ben is driving to the garage)  
> \- Too Afraid to Love - The Black Keys (Chapter One - the song Phasma puts on the jukebox at Maz's to tease Ben)  
> \- Love Is Blue - Marty Robbins (Chapter Three - the song on the radio at the garage when Ben and Rose are working)  
> \- White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes (Chapter Three - the song Ben listens to while watching the lightning, and that he and Armie listened to on their storm-spotting date)  
> \- You Had Me At Hello - Mystery Jets (Chapter Four - the song playing in the restaurant when Armie and Ben start talking over dessert)


	5. Car Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Ben and Armie have a discussion in which some of Pryde's manipulative tendencies come to light (see end notes for more detail)

Despite his best efforts, the gift weighed on Ben’s mind for the entire week following his birthday. He realised he was doing that a lot lately, allowing Armie and the various small things he did to permeate his every waking thought, but it wasn’t something he could exactly help. It had been bad enough knowing he was in possession of Armie’s number, but now that he had a present from him too, he was going into overdrive trying to analyse every tiny possible meaning in it. Had he chosen the scarf because of its colour, or because of its material? Had he chosen it himself, or had he sent someone out to get something for him – there had to be some sort of staff members up at that huge house, surely? Perhaps the timid-looking man who’d been the one to pass along his number – Mitaka?

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, depending on how he looked at it – overthinking Armie’s gift was just about all he could do with regards to him. Midway through September and with the colder weather starting to move in, the entire town was beginning to make its preparations for autumn and winter and he’d suddenly become bogged down at the garage with countless small jobs to the point where he hadn’t had time to wander around town hoping to bump into Armie in person. He spent his entire week swapping out tyres for ones with better grip, fixing broken and mud-caked exhausts, selling bottles of wiper fluid and antifreeze in what felt like gallons and napping on the office couch whenever he had a spare moment. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Rose had taken the week off to go and visit her sister in another state, a trip that felt suspiciously hastily planned and that Ben suspected she’d taken in order to avoid him and the inevitable confrontation about her involvement in the plot to invite Armie to dinner.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d stayed. It wasn’t Rose that Ben was irritated with, despite the fact she’d conspired to bring the whole thing about. Rose hadn’t even been a part of their friend group when Armie had left town all those years ago, she hadn’t been privy to the very worst of the depression that had hit Ben in those first few months, and so he couldn’t blame her for not realising quite how delicate a situation she was meddling with. No, it was Phasma who he wanted to talk to about it, and she’d conveniently managed to avoid him for the majority of the week so far.

It was Saturday morning by the time she finally showed her face. Ben had just waved off his most recent customer and was busy wiping down the dipstick he’d used to check the oil in her car when Poe’s truck pulled up at the gas pumps out front, the windows rolled down and music floating out from the stereo. It was the choice of music that alerted Ben to the fact Phasma was with him, something old and British that couldn’t have come from anything other than her playlist plugged into the aux cord. Poe cut the engine and hopped out, raising a hand in greeting as he headed across the forecourt. He wasn’t wearing his work clothes, which told Ben that he and Phasma had arrived purely to talk to him and not for anything business related, and that he should brace himself for a grilling. It was a shame, he’d been having a nice morning – the sun had decided to come out, and despite the light chill in the air he’d enjoyed a quiet few hours in relative peace before they decided to show up.

“Where’s Finn?” Poe asked in lieu of a ‘hello’, leaning round Ben to look further into the garage and crouching down to check if he was beneath either of the two cars there. Instead he found Chewie, sprawled out on his belly and fast asleep with a worn tennis ball still clamped in his mouth.

“Next town over, he had to go pick up some parts we ordered. Should be back in a couple hours or so.” Ben set the dipstick aside on a cluttered workbench and slung the oily rag over his shoulder, turning his attention from Poe to glower at Phasma as she got out of the truck and rounded the pump to come join them. She was walking with far too much confidence for someone in her position, someone so _clearly_ in the wrong, and Ben was immediately irritated by the way she held her head so high and strode over to them with almost sweeping movements as if she were entirely blameless and had nothing to feel sorry for.

“Benjamin,” she greeted smoothly, drawing her coat further about herself and tucking her hands comfortably in her pockets.

Ben scoffed. “Don’t.” He shook his head, scuffing the sole of his boot over the ground as he thought of what to say. They were going to have this argument, it was inevitable, and he wanted to just get it out of the way instead of wasting time making small talk about the weather or their respective weeks just to stall. He liked Phasma, he really did, and she was one of the few people who he could say genuinely understood the situation with Armie and knew him on nearly the same level he did, but she could get on his nerves so easily at the same time. She was what Leia would call a ‘big personality’, very sure of herself and headstrong, sometimes to a fault. It could be a good thing, like how she’d protected Armie when they were younger, but on the flipside it meant she acted rashly, did things without thinking them through – things like inviting his ex to his birthday dinner with no forewarning whatsoever. “I didn’t say you could do that,” Ben said eventually, shrugging and shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean…what were you _thinking?_ ”

Phasma sighed and rolled her eyes, throwing her hands up in the air. As if she hadn’t expected this, as if she hadn’t anticipated some sort of backlash for it and was now being caught completely off-guard. “Oh, come on. It turned out fine, didn’t it?! It was a _success_ , everyone loved it.” She wasn’t wrong, technically. Down the other end of the table from him, Ben had been aware of Rey and Finn and Poe knocking back glass after glass of wine and howling with laughter amongst themselves. It was just up _his_ end of the table that things were near-unbearably awkward.

“What happened to me being careful around him? How am I supposed to _do_ that when you put him right in front of me like that, without even warning me first?”

Poe cleared his throat and shot Phasma an apologetic look. “Uh, yeah, I’m with Ben on this one. We talked about this, Phas.”

Phasma immediately rounded on him, jabbing a finger at his chest. “Oh come off it, Dameron, I didn’t see you complaining when you were drinking half the wine list – for a _huge_ discount, might I add.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?!”

“ _Hey!_ ” Ben yelled, clapping his hands together once to silence them. It felt like the kind of thing that would work on squabbling children, and yet it shut them up quickly, which in itself spoke volumes about the way they were acting. “Enough, alright? Look, I’m just trying to figure out what _you_ want me to do. You tell me to be careful, not to backslide, then you go and orchestrate this… _thing_ , this whole night where we’re meant to act like a happy couple again the same way we did when we were eighteen, and I just…what were you hoping to get out of that?” He sighed, pulling the rag off his shoulder and going to toss it in the plastic bin with the others that needed cleaning. Five minutes in and already the conversation had drained him, that had to be a new record.

Phasma took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders once. “You’re the one who said we shouldn’t freeze him out completely. I’ll admit, I didn’t go about it right, but in my defence I thought we agreed it was fine to talk to him.”

Poe snorted and leaned against the wall, folding his arms across his chest. “Right. But there’s a big difference between being nice to him if you pass him in the street, and inviting him out to a fancy candlelit dinner for Ben’s birthday. You _get_ that, right? You see the distinction there?”

“I _just_ thought, maybe he could use a night out,” Phasma said, raising her voice a little to talk over the end of Poe’s sentence and cut him off. They bickered like an old married couple, and it was almost comical that they were standing there panicking about Ben’s ability to handle confrontation when the pair of them couldn’t even let each other speak for longer than five seconds.

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why? He seemed fine.” Notwithstanding the incident he’d overheard in the bathroom, although of course he wasn’t about to mention that to Poe and Phasma. It had felt _deeply_ private, and he regretted even hearing it himself. That still hadn’t stopped him from thinking about it all week, mulling it over in his head and trying to draw some sort of conclusion about what exactly was going on up at that house. All he really knew was that the combination of the phone call he’d overheard at the restaurant and the phone call he’d overheard Pryde make at the garage was forming an image of him in his mind that made him feel faintly sick whenever he thought about it. “Unless you know something I don’t?”

Phasma sighed and shook her head. “No. No, I don’t. He hasn’t talked to me about…anything.” Ben could tell that she was distressed by that fact. She and Armie had once shared everything, there wasn’t a single secret one of them had that the other didn’t know. Ben couldn’t help but feel bad her, despite everything – he had to remind himself that until they started dating, Phasma had been everything to Armie, his only real friend and confidant, the only person he felt safe talking to about Brendol, his home life, all of it. To now be cut off from that, and for him to close up and refuse to tell her anything, had to hurt. He knew as much, because he was hurting from it himself.

The thought was enough to calm him down, and he took a deep breath and let his shoulders relax. “Okay. Well. It turned out fine, so I guess this time there’s no harm done. But for the love of God, _please_ , ask me next time. Just…give me some warning, so I know what to expect.”

Phasma went quiet for a minute, then nodded. “Okay. Okay, good. We’ll put it behind us, ‘kay?”

Poe seemed relieved the entire thing was over, and he visibly relaxed from the tense stance he’d adopted against the wall. “And you’re sure you’re alright?” he asked warily, tilting his head to one side and looking at Ben the way characters in a zombie movie look at someone they suspect has been bitten – suspicious, waiting for them to blow up and go insane, untrusting of the calm before the storm.

Ben simply nodded. “Yeah,” he said, keeping his voice as casual and light as possible. “Yeah, I’m totally fine. Honestly, better than I expected. But…yeah. Just focusing on work. I’m alright.” He wandered over to the car he’d been working on before his last client had distracted him, and grabbed a creeper laying off to one side so he could slide himself underneath it to resume what he was doing.

Back out on in the garage, Poe and Phasma exchanged a look. “Huh. Not…freaking out at all?”

“Not freaking out,” Ben said from beneath the car. “Really – we talked, briefly, while you guys were piling into your cars. I think everything’s fine. We can be normal.”

The whole room went silent for a while, save for the light noise of metal scraping as Ben loosened a bolt with a wrench. He knew Poe and Phasma were milling it over, digesting what he’d said, trying to wrap their heads around the idea that he really was okay and wasn’t as volatile as they’d feared. He didn’t blame them, considering that earlier in the month he’d managed to punch his way through the office wall and drink down over half of a bottle of whiskey just because he caught a glimpse of his ex at the bar. He’d be concerned for himself too, if he were looking in from the outside.

As if they’d come to a silent agreement, the conversation ended there, and Poe swiftly changed the subject. “You mind if I hang around and wait for Finn to come back?”

“Sure.” Ben slid himself out from under the car again briefly to point at the desk over by the office door. “If you wanna be useful you could tidy up those papers there, they’ve kinda been getting on top of me this week. Haven’t had time to fix ‘em up.” The constant stream of customers wanting on-the-spot jobs done meant that he was writing out receipts and invoices constantly without any time to put properly file them, resulting in a large haphazard stack that he’d dumped a rusty old carburetor on top of to act as a paperweight in case of a strong breeze. The oldest papers down at the very bottom were from as early as the beginning of the month, and he had a persistent nagging fear that one day he’d manage to spill coffee or oil over the entire thing and create a nightmare for himself trying to salvage them all.

“Uh-huh. Yeah, no problem.” Poe pushed himself away from the wall and wandered over to the desk, whistling to himself as he sorted things into piles. Back when they’d all been at school and required to complete two weeks’ worth of compulsory work experience as part of their social studies class, Han had done most of Ben’s friends a favour and allowed them to come hang around the garage all day doing menial tasks that wouldn’t put them at any sort of risk. As a result, Poe and Phasma and Rey had all learned the filing system to a workable degree, and considering the fact it hadn’t changed in decades, the knowledge was still applicable.

Phasma came over to crouch down beside Ben, sticking her hand out and clicking her fingers to encourage Chewie to come to her. When he did lope his way over, she coaxed the mushy ball from his mouth and bounced it lightly across the floor so he could chase after it. “Did you enjoy your birthday, at least?” she asked, keeping her eyes on Chewie instead of looking directly at Ben. “I mean…despite everything, you had a good time?”

Ben sighed. He didn’t want to really fight with Phasma, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She’d meant well, even if she’d been somewhat misguided. “Yeah. Yeah, I had a good time. Thanks for arranging it, really.” He used his foot to hook round the leg of a short wooden stool nearby, dragging it closer for her to sit on. As far as peace offerings went it wasn’t anything glamorous, but it was something. “So that thing with Unamo…is it serious? Because you guys seemed to be hitting it off…”

“Uh. Ben.” Poe’s voice pulled them both away from their conversation, and they both turned their heads in unison to look over at him. “Why does this paper say Enric Pryde?”

Phasma’s eyebrows lifted to her hairline. “Armie’s husband?”

“Ugh.” Ben rolled his eyes and shrugged stiffly. “Yeah, uh. He’s having us wash his car twice a month, like…a regular thing. It’s this classic Aston Martin, pretty fancy. Says he only wants ‘trained professionals’ working on it – stuck-up asshole.” He snorted, shaking his head. “I didn’t tell him that all of us here were taught by Han, and that he’s anything but professional.”

Poe grinned, slapping the paper back down on the desk with a triumphant little ‘whoop’ sound. “Hah! So you agree, he’s a piece of shit. I _told_ you, didn’t I? God, you know, I’m almost _glad_ it’s not just me who has to deal with him? I mean, I pity you, don’t get me wrong. But I’m glad you _get_ it now.” Poe stuffed Pryde’s papers under a stack of documents with a little more force than necessary. “That’s gotta suck, though, man. I’m sorry.”

Ben blinked. “For what?”

“Y’know. That you gotta make nice with the guy who’s…y’know…” He made some sort of crude gesture with his hands, meshing his fingers together in a jabbing motion. “…Armie.”

The realisation hit, and Ben screwed his face up. “Ew! God, are you kidding me? C’mon, man. Gross.”

Phasma stood up with a sharp intake of breath. “ _Okay_ , on that note, I think we’re done here. Poe, I want coffee, let’s go and leave Ben to it. You can come pick Finn up at the end of the day.” She paused and reached down to squeeze Ben’s shoulder, giving him a little smile. “I’m proud of you, you know. For how you’re handling this.”

Ben nodded, finding it difficult to meet her eyes. Chewie ambled back over and dropped the damp ball in his lap, providing a helpful distraction as he buried his fingers in the fur on his head to give him a scratch. “Yeah. Yeah…thanks, Phas.” He watched them leave together, abandoning the truck in the forecourt and walking off with linked arms in the direction of town.

* * *

The rest of the day passed quietly. The morning rush slowed down some, which was understandable given the fact that the town’s older population tended to prefer being indoors by the early evening before the dark set in. The various clients he did have were all simple enough jobs, nothing too taxing, and most of them were content to sit and scroll on their phones instead of trying to force a conversation while he worked, which he was grateful for.

Han came into the garage despite it being his off-day in order to deliver some lunch for Ben, which turned out to be leftovers from the meal Leia had cooked the night before, and a very welcome contrast to the limp sandwich he’d otherwise have eaten. He sat in the back office and reheated it in the microwave while listening to a live football commentary on the radio, but it was a frequency from the city and the weak signal eventually got so crackly that he gave up and turned it off in favour of eating in silence. It was quite nice really, after such a busy few days and the somewhat uncomfortable conversation earlier, to just have a minute to himself.

Finn came back just before closing. He’d taken Ben’s truck with him to go and collect the parts they’d ordered, since the bed was big and empty and his own car wouldn’t hold everything it needed to. Ben helped him unload everything and get it all stored away, then let him go home early as compensation for having to make the long drive all the way out to the next town and back in the space of a day. Travelling west to the town they’d visited for his birthday was a short enough trip, but going east, the closest town took three hours to reach by car. It was a short drive in comparison to some road trips in the US, but still one to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Han had told Finn they’d pay for him to stay in a motel overnight if he didn’t want to drive six hours in one day, but Finn had been determined to get there and back as fast as possible.

Once Finn had collected his things and gone home, Ben spent the rest of the afternoon calling various customers to inform them their parts had arrived and that their car would be ready for collection in two days’ time. All that was left to do after that was to clean up his workspace, make sure he hadn’t left anything flammable next to anything hot, grab the keys and go.

The sun was just beginning to set when the phone went off. Ben had already pulled on his jacket and was just reaching for the wall panel to set the security alarm when he heard it ring in the office, and he headed in to answer it with a quiet groan. So close. So close to leaving, yet so far.

“Solo Motors. We’re just about to close up for the day, how can I…?”

“Ben?” Armie’s voice drifted out softly from the speaker, washing over Ben like a cool wave and flipping his mood on its head instantly.

“Oh.” _Very eloquent. Well done, Benjamin, very nice._ “Hey. Uh, hi. You okay?”

There was a pause, and for a moment Ben wondered if the line had cut out, then Armie sighed quietly. “I’m sorry, I know you’re closing, it’s just…it’s my car. I was driving back up to the house just now and the stupid thing broke down, I don’t know what happened to it.” He sounded frustrated, but in the kind of upper-class, polite way that Ben associated with classic movies. He half expected Armie to break out a ridiculous word like ‘dastardly’, in that breathy, irritated voice that spoke to years of stifled British upbringing.

Ben glanced at the clock and grimaced. Technically it wouldn’t be a problem if he left now to help Armie; he could take the tow truck and then just run it back down to the garage and lock up after, nobody would care. And really, what was he in a hurry to get home for? It wasn’t as if he had someone cooking him dinner, his microwave ready meal could wait. He found himself saying, “Whereabouts are you?” before he even registered the words were coming out of his mouth.

Armie let out a relieved little breath. “The dirt road,” he said. He didn’t need to explain which one, Ben already knew. Everyone in town just called it ‘the dirt road’ – it didn’t lead anywhere but the big house, nobody else ever used it, and it was only a known feature of the town because it helped people navigate to the farm just before it – _‘if you’ve hit the dirt road, you’ve gone too far.’_ “About three miles up,” Armie continued.

“Okay. You’re not far – gimme ten, fifteen minutes to get the tow ready and I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you, Ben,” Armie said, and the sound of his name in Armie’s voice ran through Ben like hot melted butter. He wondered if Armie knew what happened when he did that, if he knew how much power he held over him just by saying a few words. Hopefully not – he’d likely find it uncomfortable, seeing as he was _married_ and Ben had no business fawning over him the way he did.

Ben quickly opened the key press in the office and grabbed the keys for the tow truck, taking a brief minute to duck into the staff bathroom and check his hair in the small streaky mirror. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he’d been working all day and hadn’t so much as glanced at himself in a reflective surface since the morning, so he just wanted to make sure he wasn’t covered in oil, and didn’t have any massive tangles in his hair. There was preening, and then were was common hygiene, and Ben preferred to think of himself as simply performing the latter.

The drive out to the dirt road was actually quite pleasant. It had been a warm September so far, despite the occasional freak rain showers and storms, and that evening was no exception. It was almost impossible to imagine the kind of harsh weather the townspeople were preparing for by getting their cars snow-ready, since that kind of thing seemed so distant in the face of the golden sun and fresh, light heat. It was only because Ben had lived in the town all his life that he knew the entire landscape would look unrecognisable in a matter of weeks, first swampy and flooded and then covered with a thick blanket of pure white snow. It was wise to make the most of the sun while it was still around, and he had his windows down as he drove, one arm resting along the open frame to feel the breeze on his skin.

By the time Ben pulled up alongside Armie’s car, he felt mercifully relaxed. He understood why Poe and Phasma were wary about his apparent calmness in the face of Armie’s return, because at times like this, he even confused himself. Being completely alone with Armie, without an audience, for the first time in years, should have been a daunting enough prospect that he spent the entire drive wanting to throw up from nerves. Instead, he felt completely fine. Good, even. He had no idea where the anger and grief and disgust had gone, and he suspected it was still lingering there precariously close to the surface, but for now he was alright.

Armie was standing by the hood of the car, which he’d popped open to allow curling tendrils of light grey smoke to escape up into the air. The car itself looked expensive and brand new, not a classic vintage like Pryde’s but instead a modern make that clearly wasn’t designed for the type of terrain Armie was driving it over. It sat so low to the ground that Ben feared it would get stuck on a small speed hump, and while it would handle the dirt road fine during the dry summer months, Armie would be in for a new kind of fresh hell trying to get it to go anywhere once the road turned to sludge as soon as it rained.

“Hey,” Ben said, raising a hand in greeting as he jumped down from the tow.

Armie looked up and smiled as he approached, and Ben was momentarily floored. The sun, which had sunk lower behind the horizon and turned the sky a hazy peach pink-orange, backlit his bright hair and made it glow around his head like a halo in a renaissance painting. The golden light caught his eyes and turned the green irises almost translucent like polished sea glass, and there was a faint flush on his cheeks that somehow made his smile seem even more beautiful. “Thank you for coming, I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure who else to call.”

Ben forced himself to snap out of it, clearing his throat and making his way over to him. “It’s no problem, really. Tell me what happened?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Armie sighed, gesturing helplessly at the car. “I was just driving back like normal, and all this smoke started coming out from under the bonnet. And there was this smell, like…burnt chemicals, that’s the only way I can describe it.” _Bonnet._ He really _had_ spent the past six years in England.

“What’s the back of the car called?” Ben asked casually, unable to resist.

Armie blinked. “The boot…oh.” He rolled his eyes, unable to fight the little smile curling the corners of his lips up. “Trunk. Stop it.”

Ben grinned, holding his hands up in surrender. He walked round the front of the car, leaning over the open hood to have a look. “How long has the engine been off?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Okay, perfect.” He unscrewed the cap of the coolant tank and had a look inside, using his phone torch to get a better view. “Your coolant level’s real low.” Backing away, he crouched down to look beneath the car, and found a small puddle of fluid soaking into the dried mud right underneath the engine. “Ah. Right, okay.” Straightening back up, he leaned in closer again to check something, then nodded. “You’ve got a crack in your coolant hose, it’s leaking. Made the engine overheat. The burnt chemical smell was coolant dripping on the engine while it was still hot.”

Armie looked back and forth between Ben and the car, as if the problem would immediately become obvious to him now that he’d been told what it was. Armie had _not_ been one of the people to undertake work experience at the garage. “Okay, so…what do I do? Can I drive it?”

Ben pulled a face. “Technically? Yeah. I could patch it with some insulating tape and you’d be fine to drive it the rest of the way up to the house, but that’s not a permanent fix. Wouldn’t recommend driving around like that for longer than a couple days, or this’ll just keep happening. Could be dangerous.”

Armie sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “What about getting it fixed properly?”

“Well, I could tow it to the garage and replace the hose for you, it’s really not that expensive.” Not for someone living in such a huge house, he felt like adding, but stopped himself before he could completely bulldoze the pleasant atmosphere.

He needn’t have bothered. Armie seemed visibly uncomfortable all of a sudden, chewing on his lower lip so hard that Ben was a little concerned he’d draw blood. He was staring at the car, his ginger brows knitted together in a deep frown. “What are the chances it could be fixed and back in the driveway by Saturday night?” Armie asked, checking the watch on his wrist.

Ben blinked. “Uh…pretty good. We have the parts in already, just need to fit it, shouldn’t take long…why?”

Armie seemed to realise he was acting strangely, and he quickly shook his head and waved a hand dismissively, but his shoulders remained tense underneath his tailored coat. “ It’s nothing, that’s just…when Enric gets back into town. He hates my driving, he’d blame me for the car breaking down. I’d just like to avoid the unnecessary argument.” He looked up at Ben with a tight-lipped smile. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”

“You know this has got nothing to do with your driving, right? It’s just a fault with the car, parts wear out all the time, happens to everyone.” Ben actually prided himself on Armie’s driving, seeing as he’d been the one to teach him. Since Brendol had always arranged for someone to collect Armie from school and drive him home every day, and drop him at school in the mornings, he’d never wanted to pay for Armie to get official driving lessons from the town’s one instructor. Armie said he’d claimed it was because the instructor only taught auto, and Brendol was a traditionalist who thought Armie should learn stick – or ‘manual’, as Armie called it. Really, though, Ben thought it was just a way for Brendol to keep Armie on a tighter leash. By stopping him driving, it was just another way in which Armie was dependent on him. So, Ben had taken it upon himself one day to pick Armie up and drive them out to the large empty field behind the farm that hadn’t yet been ploughed and sowed that year. He’d parked up, got out of the driver’s seat and told Armie to switch places with him, and they’d spent the rest of the day going round in circles until Armie’s nerves steadied. They’d kept the lessons up for a few months, moving to the roads once Armie got his permit, and then Han and Leia had paid for him to take his test as a birthday present the year he turned sixteen.

“I know. It’s just…one of those things.” Armie shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. “So Saturday night would be possible?”

Ben was still wary, but nodded and said, “Yeah. Yeah, Saturday night works. I’ll drop you up at the house then swing back and hook it up to the tow, c’mon.” He turned and started walking back towards the truck, digging his keys out of his jeans pocket.

“It’s fine, I can walk, really…”

Ben sighed, pivoting on one foot to look at him. “Armie. It’s a seven-mile walk from here, you’d be at it for hours. Besides, it’ll be getting dark soon, which means the temperature’ll drop. Don’t be stubborn.”

Armie hesitated for a minute, then finally relented and walked back over to the truck with him. Ben was very glad he was driving the tow and not his own old truck, because the sight of Armie sitting in the cab would have been too familiar, too raw. At least this way he could try to keep his mind on the fact that he was just helping Armie out as a matter of business, as a mechanic to a customer, nothing more than that.

Ben started up the engine and got them on the road, turning on the radio and keeping the volume low for a little background noise. It was far better than sitting in silence, which he desperately wanted to avoid. So far he was doing well, well enough that he imagined Phasma would be proud of him if she could see him now, and he didn’t want to get too lost in his own head by giving himself the opportunity to be alone with his thoughts. He kept glancing over at Armie as they drove, admiring the way the branches of the tall hedges that lined the road cast elegant shadows over his face.

“How much do I owe you for the tow?” Armie asked out of nowhere, glancing over at him and meeting Ben’s eyes staring back at him. The pair of them flushed and Ben immediately glued his eyes back to the road ahead, clearing his throat gruffly.

“Nothing. It’s fine, it’s not a big deal.”

“Come on, you have to let me pay you, I dragged you out after closing time.” Armie shifted himself in his seat to face him more directly, one leg hitched up ever so slightly and bent at the knee.

Ben swallowed a lump in his throat, his hands clenching and unclenching once around the steering wheel. “Armie, I mean it, it’s _fine_.”

Armie sighed and went back to looking out the window, not speaking again for the rest of the drive. They pulled up at the house in just over ten minutes, the large structure looming into view under a sky that had finally bled into a light twilight lilac. It was Ben’s first time seeing it in years, and he was surprised by the change. Gone was the gothic haunted mansion he and his friends had to dare each other to go near, and in its place was a modern house whose only distinguishing characteristic was its size. Poe had been right about the grounds; the dirt road led out onto a semi-circular white gravel driveway, in the middle of which was a patch of neatly-trimmed lawn that had somehow remained a lush green colour despite every other blade of grass in the town shrivelling up and turning yellow in the summer heat. He recalled Poe saying something about sprinklers, and when he concentrated he could just about make one out oscillating back and forth over the small patch. It was _nice_ , sure, in a way that chain hotels were _nice_. It was…inoffensive, you could pick it up and put it anywhere else in the country and it wouldn’t necessarily be out of place, because it didn’t really have any features to tie it to an area or era.

Ben shut off the engine, and for a minute both he and Armie just sat there staring out the front window at the house, the sounds of their quiet breathing filling the cab of the truck.

“At least let me make you a coffee,” Armie said softly, as though he were afraid that saying it at full volume would make it too real.

“I don’t know…” Ben’s stomach lurched at the idea of walking in and having to see Pryde in his natural habitat, in the space he got to share with Armie, intimately, privately. Up until now it had been relatively possible for him to separate Pryde and Armie in his mind, since he’d never actually seen them in the same place as one another, but having to look at them side-by-side would be too much for him to handle. Everything would be so much more stark – the age-difference being just _one_ thing of many he didn’t want to see up close.

Armie seemed to sense what the problem was, and quickly added, “Enric isn’t here at the moment, he’s staying in the city for the week. And Mitaka is out getting groceries – it’s just me.” 

Ben thought for a second, then nodded and climbed wordlessly down out of the truck before he could change his mind. A coffee couldn’t hurt, a coffee was…neutral. A normal thing that two normal, civil adults could do, and if it made Armie feel better about not paying him for the tow, then why not? He followed closely behind Armie as he went to go and unlock the door, taking extra care to wipe his boots off on both the outside and inside doormats so he didn’t tarnish the pristine white marble floor of the foyer.

Inside, the house was ridiculous. Rey and Poe had clearly done an amazing job technically, but the style that had been chosen was hideous in its pretentious simplicity. It felt like a hospital or a laboratory as opposed to a home, a big cavernous space with no sense of character or charm. Everything was white, from the floor to the walls to any upholstered furniture Ben could see, and there wasn’t a speck of dust or dirt on anything. Other items of furniture like tables and chairs were made of a clear acrylic, the sort of thing people in the 1960s would have described the ‘house of the future’ as looking like. The overhead lights were harsh and cool-toned, the light fixture a twisted metal sculpture that was clearly modern art’s take on a traditional chandelier.

“Enric picked out the décor,” Armie said, giving Ben a small sheepish smile as he hung up his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He beckoned for Ben to follow him through to the kitchen, which was located just beyond the living room in an open-plan set-up that did absolutely nothing for the echoing, oppressive spaciousness of the place.

The kitchen itself looked like a showroom, all shiny chrome appliances that looked like they’d never been used since being taken out of their boxes. There were no crumbs around the toaster and no stack of coffee mugs by the sink like in Ben’s own house, and he found himself genuinely stressed about the idea of getting a dirty mark on the clean white granite countertops that would act as evidence of his having been there.

Armie went to a cupboard and pulled out two plain white mugs, setting the first under an expensive-looking coffee machine and pushing a button to get it working. The very fact that all the mugs were identical and nondescript was eerie in itself; Ben’s own cupboard was stuffed full of mugs he’d collected over several years, like the one with their school’s logo on it, or the collection of national parks mugs that he bought from gift shops with his pocket money whenever Han and Leia took him camping as a kid. It was the same for everyone else he knew – Phasma had her chipped summer camp mugs and Poe and Finn had their novelty mugs from the trip they’d taken to Disney a couple years back just before they’d moved in together. The absolute lack of anything characterful inside the house was beginning to give Ben goosebumps on his arms. “Take a seat, make yourself at…” Armie trailed off, clearing his throat softly. “Get comfortable.”

Ben frowned, but took the advice and perched himself on one of the breakfast bar stools in front of the kitchen island. For a minute they remained in awkward silence, and half of Ben wished he’d never agreed to come in, but then the coffee was ready and Armie could distract himself by grabbing it and sliding it gently across the counter to Ben. “Here,” he murmured. “Hope it’s alright.”

“Thanks.” Ben immediately cupped both hands around the mug like a lifeline, giving it a chance to cool down while Armie set about making his own. Something was weighing on his mind, and in the face of total quiet and for lack of anything better to talk about, he said, “You were really going to walk seven miles back to the house, weren’t you? You realise that would have taken you over two hours.”

Armie’s shoulders visibly tensed, his back still turned to Ben as he fussed about with the coffee machine. “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s a nice evening, I would have been fine.”

“You would have been _exhausted_ ,” Ben countered, raising his mug to his mouth and taking a sip with a deep frown. It was café-quality coffee, probably some expensive roast, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth that he was sure had nothing to do with the drink and everything to do with the strange atmosphere that had suddenly settled over the room. “When we left you outside the bar the other night, on my birthday… _tell_ me you didn’t walk all the way back here then.”

Armie sighed, turning around and coming to sit on the opposite side of the kitchen island to Ben, absently rubbing at a little drip of coffee that had run down the side of the mug with his finger. It felt like he was bracing himself to get defensive, but then his shoulders sagged all of a sudden and he shook his head. “Of course not. We were in the next town over, I’d have been walking all night.”

“So what did you do?” Why did he need to ask? It wasn’t his business, he needed to shut up and stop digging, because there was a 99% chance he wouldn’t like what he found and he’d have nobody to blame but himself for prying into Armie’s private live. And yet, still, his curiosity was getting the better of him, and he steadied his gaze on Armie’s face, leaning forward expectantly in anticipation of an answer.

“I stayed in the hotel.” Armie said it casually, like it wasn’t a big deal, taking a sip of his coffee and turning his head to one side to gaze out of the window at the sun setting over the garden beyond. The back yard was much the same as the front, from what Ben could see, only with less gravel and more neat grass and some low flowerbeds filled with dark green leafy plants.

Ben blinked. “The hotel. The one attached to the restaurant?”

Armie nodded. “Mm. It seemed easier than making the trip all the way back, I didn’t want anyone to go ten miles out of their way just to drop me at the house.”

Bullshit. It was bullshit, plain and simple. None of the designated drivers that night would have minded dropping Armie off, or at least taking him most of the way so he wasn’t completely stranded. Ben had said as much on the night itself, and he was sure Phasma had said the same when the pair of them were on their way to the restaurant in the first place. Hell, Finn had voluntarily chosen to drive over 400 miles earlier that day for work – ten miles would have been _nothing_ to them. Something didn’t add up. “How did you pay for it?” he blurted out before he could stop himself, then sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. _Nice one, Solo, you asshole_. “It’s just. Y’know, your card…”

“Pre-paid,” Armie explained calmly, fidgeting with the mug in his hands. His back had gone very straight, in a way that reminded Ben of TV crime dramas when someone was being interrogated by the police. “I paid when I booked.”

“…Right.” Ben felt a little better knowing Armie had planned for it all along, and that they hadn’t just driven away and left him there without him having some semblance of an idea of where he was going to sleep that night, but something still felt off. He sighed, nudging his mug away and putting his face in his hands for a second. Oh, god. He really hadn’t wanted to have this conversation, he’d wanted to leave it alone, but he just couldn’t.

“Ben…?” Armie asked softly, sounding concerned.

“I heard you on the phone,” Ben said quickly, all in a rush. Groaning, he stood up and took a couple steps back and forth, not quite pacing but still full of restless energy. “Back at the restaurant, when your card got declined. I went to use the bathroom, and…I heard you on the phone to your husband.”

Armie’s expression was neutral, but a little nerve in his throat jumped, his hands tightening around his mug. It was subtle, the only evidence of his stress rising being the whitening of his knuckles and the slightest twich of a muscle, but Ben knew him well enough to pick up on it. “Oh,” he said quietly. “I see.” He went silent for a minute, then added, “How much did you hear?”

“All of it,” Ben said, grimacing. “I mean, I…I caught the end. I didn’t mean to listen, I didn’t realise you were out there. I wanted to leave but I thought it might be worse if I interrupted you.”

Armie just nodded, remaining infuriatingly silent.

Ben couldn’t help it, he had to prod at it further. It was like a scab he’d picked at once and now couldn’t leave alone, or an itch it was proving impossible to scratch. He’d wondered earlier where his upset at the entire situation had gone, and now it was slowly starting to make itself known again, at a pace too fast for him to clock and slow down. “What _was_ that?” he asked, trying and failing to keep his tone low and quiet. This was Armie’s business, he was taking liberties by prying into it, he had to at least try to be respectful, and yet there was a desperate edge creeping into his voice that was making it go up an octave and sound more strained. “It sounded…bad.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Armie sighed and got up to take their coffee mugs to the sink despite them being still half-full, clearly wanting an excuse to turn his back on Ben and distract himself with something. “It was just Enric, he…got the wrong impression. He’d seen a couple of transactions on the card and he drew some conclusions that made him upset – incorrect conclusions, mind you, which is what I was trying to explain to him on the phone.”

“Conclusions?” Ben said dumbly, watching Armie run the hot tap and start cleaning their mugs. The water was steaming, so hot it was turning Armie’s hand pink beneath it, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Armie shifted uncomfortably. “He saw I’d booked the hotel, and that earlier that day I’d spent some money at a clothes store in town. He thought I was…meeting someone. If you know what I mean.”

Ben felt faintly sick. “I’m sorry. The clothes store was the scarf you got me, right? Sorry.”

Armie shook his head, but still didn’t turn back to look at Ben. “Don’t be silly, you don’t have to apologise. I wasn’t just going to turn up at your birthday dinner without buying you a present, you’re not responsible for Enric and his propensity for jumping to paranoid conclusions.”

Ben went quiet for a little while and stared at Armie’s back, the delicate lines of his shoulders, the contrast of red hair against pale skin at the nape of his neck. How many times had he woken up to that exact sight? How many times had that pale, freckled skin been the first thing he saw in the morning, and the last thing he saw at night? “This is none of my business,” he said slowly. “So please…tell me to shut up if I’m overstepping. But…he watches your transactions? Every day?”

Armie shrugged stiffly. “The account is in his name, not mine. I can’t really stop him looking if he wants to.”

Ben frowned. “But…that’ll change soon, right? That…assistant he’s got, Mitaka, he said he just hasn’t had a chance to set up his US bank account yet. Once you do that he’ll stop keeping tabs on you, right?”

Armie shook his head. “I won’t be setting up an account.”

Ben blinked. “Why?”

“Because I have nothing to put in it.”

Ben wasn’t sure if he was missing something obvious, because none of this was making any sense to him. “But…pay checks? I don’t know, just…off the top of my head, that’s something that could go in it.” The goosebumps that had developed on his arms earlier had spread to his whole body, the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck standing up as a chill crept down his spine. Something was wrong, very wrong, he just didn’t know exactly how or what, and it was making him beyond uncomfortable.

Armie sighed. “Yes, they would be, if I had any. But I don’t.” He finished washing up the mugs and turned around to face Ben again, his expression unreadable. The set of his jaw said defiance, as if he were daring Ben to criticise him, but his eyes and mouth betrayed a deep kind of melancholy that Ben had only seen on him a handful of times, usually when Brendol had said or done something so cutting that it had been impossible for Armie to just cry about it and move on. It was incredibly unsettling.

Ben frowned. “Hold on. You’re not working? You told me you have a _master’s_ in Engineering Science, and you’re not working? _Why?_ ”

The next few words out of Armie’s mouth were so insane that Ben honestly wasn’t sure if he’d heard him right. “Enric doesn’t like it.”

Ben blinked. “Enric doesn’t like what.”

“Me, working.” Armie shifted uncomfortably on the spot. “I don’t…I don’t have my own money. I use Enric’s card because…I use Enric’s money. That isn’t…there are no plans for that to change.”

Ben shook his head, wondering if this entire thing was an elaborate prank. Any minute now a much younger man would walk out from somewhere, someone good and kind and that Armie actually _deserved_ , and they’d tell him the whole situation with Pryde was nothing more than a practical joke and their marriage was actually completely normal. That would have made more sense to him than any of this actually being real. “So…hold on. You have a…what? Like an _allowance_ , like a kid?” Ben’s hands were clenching and unclenching by his sides.

“I…I suppose it’s like that…” Armie said quietly, his face burning red. He’d dropped his gaze to the floor and refused to pick it back up again, his arms folded defensively in front of his chest.

“Armie. Armie _come on_ , you _have_ to see why that’s fucked up. So he can just cut you off whenever he feels like it, and there’s nothing you can do about it? What if you hadn’t pre-booked the hotel, huh? What would you have done then, in the next town over, miles away from home, with no money? The hell does he mean, he doesn’t _like_ you working? How is it his fucking business anyway?” His voice was raising, no matter how hard he tried to get it back under control, and he could feel himself getting hot all over.

“Ben, _please_ ,” Armie begged. “It’s not that different to how Brendol used to be, it’s not like you haven’t seen this before…” It was true – when Ben and Poe and the others had gone out and got summer jobs and part-time jobs during school, Brendol had resolutely refused to let Armie work, citing it as a distraction from his schoolwork that could jeopardise his chances of getting into a decent college. It hadn’t felt like too harsh of a restriction at the time – after all, plenty of parents preferred their children to focus more on school than work – but now a whole new sinister light was being shed on it.

“Yeah, and Brendol was your _father!_ The guy was a sick bastard but at least he had the excuse of being your _parent_ , what excuse does Pryde have, huh? I know he’s the same age as Brendol but that doesn’t mean he can act like he _owns_ you.”

“ _Ben!_ ”

“What? Tell me I’m wrong, Armie. Tell me that’s not what’s happening here, because it’s sure as hell what it _looks_ like. How were you planning on explaining the car to him, huh? You said you don’t want him to know it’s broken, how were you gonna explain the charge for fixing it?”

“I was going to get the money out at an ATM, pay in cash…” Armie whispered.

“And then what? Tell him you spent the money on groceries? This is _ridiculous_ , Armie! You shouldn’t have to worry about formulating some insane _lie_ every time you need to spend money!”

“Ben, _please_ , can we not do this now? This isn’t how I wanted to have this conversation, can we please just slow down…?”

Ben took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. Punching a hole in the doubtlessly very expensive wall wouldn’t do either of them any good, and he doubted he’d get away with it as easily as he got away with the one back at the garage. Aside from that, he didn’t want to scare Armie. He had to be better than that, for him. “This just doesn’t… _feel_ like you, Armie,” he said, as calmly as possible. “I’ve heard how he talks to you on the phone, and now this too…I don’t know why you’re putting up with it. I _really_ don’t. I mean…is it worth it? All his bullshit, is it worth the money? Is that what you care about now?”

“Ben…” There were tears in Armie’s eyes, and Ben had never felt like more of a piece of shit than in that very moment. For all his ranting and yelling about Pryde treating Armie like dirt, he’d gone and made him cry. He, _Ben_ , had made Armie cry. It was something he’d promised himself years ago would never happen; he’d always done his best to make sure he was the one person Armie could always turn to to feel better when the rest of the world was against him. The one person he didn’t have to be frightened of, or intimidated by. And here he was, spitting in the face of all of that. “I tried to tell you all this, I thought you knew…” Armie whispered, taking a step forwards as if to walk over to him.

Before Ben could respond, the sound of the front door clicking open resounded throughout the large, cavernous space. Mitaka, back with the groceries, no doubt. Ben shook his head, knowing he needed to get out of the house before he did or said anything to make the situation worse. “I have to go,” he said tightly, his voice sounding hoarse to his own ears, and he turned on his heel and stalked out towards the front door without looking back. He didn’t hear Armie try to follow him, though that could have been the ringing in his ears blocking out everything else around him.

At the front door, Mitaka was setting several paper grocery bags down on the floor and removing his black coat to hang up. He looked up in surprise when he saw Ben, eyebrows raising. “Oh,” he said. “Does Mr Pryde know you’re…?”

Ben was storming out of the front door and down the driveway towards the tow truck before he could finish his sentence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (TW detail: Armie describes how he's dependent on Pryde for money because Pryde won't let him work, and Ben gets angry about it, directing some of that anger at Armie as he believes at this point that he entered into this arrangement willingly and likes it this way)
> 
> Heyyyyyy :D Sorry it's been so long! How's everyone holding up? Personally I'm very glad to be back, thank you so much for all your sweet comments on the last couple chapters, I really appreciate them and they're what motivated me to finally write this chapter! I hope you enjoyed it, I'm really liking these slightly longer chapters so I think I'll try to stick to this format from now on (please bear in mind I have another kylux fic that I've been neglecting for far too long and that I also want to start updating again - called Days Under Different Suns for anyone who's interested, it's a post TROS fix-it - and so if updates are more sporadic with this fic, it's because I'm working on two at once! I'll do my best, though!). From here on out is where things start to pick up, so I hope this chapter kicked things off with a bang and some good angst. 
> 
> As always, comments absolutely make my day and I'll appreciate it so much if you let me know what you thought of this chapter! <3 
> 
> Updated playlist (one day I'll put these all in a YouTube playlist to make it easier but for now we're doing this):  
> \- Twist and Shout - The Beatles (Chapter One - the song on the truck radio when Ben is driving to the garage)  
> \- Too Afraid to Love - The Black Keys (Chapter One - the song Phasma puts on the jukebox at Maz's to tease Ben)  
> \- Love Is Blue - Marty Robbins (Chapter Three - the song on the radio at the garage when Ben and Rose are working)  
> \- White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes (Chapter Three - the song Ben listens to while watching the lightning, and that he and Armie listened to on their storm-spotting date)  
> \- You Had Me At Hello - Mystery Jets (Chapter Four - the song playing in the restaurant when Armie and Ben start talking over dessert)  
> \- That's Entertainment - The Jam (Chapter Five - the song Phasma is playing in Poe's truck when they pull up to the garage to talk to Ben)  
> \- Dedicated To The One I Love - The Mamas & The Papas (Chapter Five - the song playing quietly on the radio when Ben and Armie are driving back up to the house in the tow truck)


	6. Moving On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have added some new tags to this fic, please note them carefully and see the end notes for a more detailed description of the potentially upsetting chapter content if you're concerned that this could be triggering to you.

The night Ben dropped Armie home marked the official end of the summer with regards to the weather. The sun vanished from the skies the very next morning, and took the fragments of Ben’s happiness that had only just started to rebuild themselves with it. And when the rain finally came, it came relentlessly.

Ben had hooked up Armie’s car to the tow truck after leaving the house with his hands shaking from barely contained rage. Blinded by anger and working with jerky and hurried movements, he’d managed to slice his hand open on the rusted metal of the tow chains, the same hand he’d bruised before by punching the wall at the garage. He spent the entire drive back to town with an oily rag wadded between his palm and the steering wheel to soak up the blood. Knowing he didn’t have the tools to deal with it at home, and likely wouldn’t be able to do much with it himself anyway, he begrudgingly took the right turning to Han and Leia’s house, where Han was sat on the porch reading a magazine with Chewie dozing at his heels. He parked the tow truck out front and walked straight past Han into the house without a word, finding Leia in the kitchen stirring a large pot of stew and listening to the news on the radio. She glanced up when she saw him, her face written over with surprise, but he still didn’t say a word as he held his hand out pitifully in front of him to let her see the damage.

Leia sat him down at the kitchen table without asking any questions, fetching the first aid kit and a bowl of warm water and bringing everything over to where the light was best. Han had entered at some point without either of them noticing, and now Leia simply tossed him the tow truck keys she’d pried from Ben’s hand and shooed him towards the door.

“What happened?” Leia asked eventually, keeping her eyes fixed on Ben’s hand as she sat down and started to work on it. Han and Leia’s kitchen had a rustic feel, and directly above the wooden block table was a rack holding copper pots and pans that were seldom ever used for anything but decoration. They turned the bright light from the overhead spotlights a hazy orange colour, and it made Ben’s eyes droop. The fight had left him during the drive, and although anger still boiled and simmered below the surface like the stew Leia had abandoned on a low heat on the stove in favour of tending to her son, it wasn’t enough to make him lash out anymore.

In a way, Ben was glad she asked. In a way, Ben knew, that was _why_ he’d gone home, as opposed to running straight to Poe or Rey or any of the others. He’d never talk about Armie’s business with their friends, not even Phasma. No matter how upset he was, how angry, he wouldn’t do that. A little gossip, sure, if they initiated it – yes, Armie was married, yes, he was living in the big house, minor things like that. But the details of his marriage, the intimates of his _life_ in that house? No, he couldn’t do that. But to _Leia_? To Leia is was different. Leia was a treasury of family secrets and private information, and had never let slip anything yet. Ben would worry about that much burden being on someone’s shoulders if it were anyone but Leia – she was unflappable.

Slowly, with plenty of breaks and disjointed sentences, Ben recounted the events that had led to him seeing Armie in the first place. The phone call to the garage right before closing, the drive out up the dirt road, the problem with the coolant hose that had broken down Armie’s car. And then, with even more difficulty, he told her about their conversation. About Armie’s arrangement with Pryde, the money – or lack thereof – and the fact he wasn’t allowed to work. Throughout it all, Leia remained silent, focusing her physical attention on Ben’s hand but keeping her head inclined in a way that let Ben know she was still listening.

When he was finished talking, Leia sighed, clicking her tongue against her teeth. She picked up a clean cotton ball from her first aid kit and doused it in rubbing alcohol, carefully dabbing it against Ben’s hand. She’d already cleaned up the dried blood that had dripped on to his fingers, and now the full extent of the gash was clear. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared – it had been getting dark by the time Ben actually cut himself, and he hadn’t been able to see exactly what he’d done until now. It was a couple of inches long, and not too deep, just in an inconvenient location – it would stretch and open up any time he opened or closed his hand, so he’d have to have it bandaged and take some time off work. Han had deliberately said nothing about it when he’d wordlessly taken the truck keys from Leia to go and finish off the tow job, just giving his shoulder a squeeze and his back a pat.

“It just doesn’t seem like him,” Ben mumbled, to top off his story. He flinched as the alcohol touched the cut, gritting his teeth and screwing his face up but managing not to close his hand into a fist. That was helped some by the fact Leia was practically pinning his fingers flat to the table with surprising strength. “He’s better than that.”

Leia didn’t say anything straight away, waiting until she’d finished with the cotton ball and thrown it in the trash can she’d dragged over to sit between her knees. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said on an exhale. “This whole arrangement doesn’t seem dissimilar to the way I remember him growing up. You remember how much of a bastard his father was, always controlling his every move.”

Ben frowned. “Right, but that’s his dad. He was a kid. It was fucked up then, but it’s even more fucked up now he’s a fully grown adult. And now that he’s _choosing_ for it to be that way.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t know any different,” Leia suggested, her voice calm as she removed a roll of bandage from the first aid kit and started unravelling it. “Doesn’t know how else to be. That doesn’t make it okay, or healthy, but we can’t blame him for falling back on something familiar.”

Ben shot her a warning look. “Christ, Mom, don’t psychoanalyse him. What, you think it’s some kinda…I dunno, some kinda Stockholm syndrome? Come on.”

Leia gave a small shrug, eyes flickering up to meet her son’s for a moment in a very pointed gaze, one that said _‘don't scoff at me like that’._ “I’m sorry, is that not what you’re looking for? A reason _why_ he might be doing this? I’m not saying that’s definitely what it is, I’m just saying it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe. His father micromanaged every part of his life, for at least as long as we knew him. That’s a difficult thing to outgrow and forget, if it’s all you’ve ever known. I think you underestimate the value of independence when you’re young, it teaches you how to take care of yourself.”

Ben shook his head, looking off to one side as Leia applied two small strips of surgical tape to his hand to hold the wound shut, before starting to wrap his hand neatly in the bandage. “You knew for a while, didn’t you?” he said absently. “About his dad, what he was doing to him.”

Leia hummed the affirmative.

“Why didn’t you try and do anything?”

Snipping the bandage and carefully tying it off, Leia sat back in her chair. “I did,” she said, holding her chin up. “I went to the police about it, once. Told them I thought he was being hurt. They went to investigate but eventually decided there was no evidence of anything being wrong – Armitage had expensive clothes, healthy food in the fridge, his notebooks from school showed he was engaged in his studies…and they didn’t see any physical signs of harm. I tried pushing it further, but they wouldn’t cooperate. And Mr Hux didn’t take too kindly to the intrusion, either. I don’t know how he found out it was me who’d tipped them off, but that autumn when your father went to the bank for a loan to extend the forecourt at the garage, it was denied, with no real justification. His credit was good, we’d never missed a repayment, we’d already paid off the mortgage on the house. All I can think is that Brendol Hux was telling us to mind our own business.”

Ben’s good hand clenched into a fist where it rested on his leg. “I fucking hate this,” he muttered. “He had other people. He had us, he had _me_. Why does he think this is his only option?”

Leia gently set her hand over Ben’s, coaxing it out of the fist and smoothing his fingers back down against his knee. “I know,” she murmured. “But you cannot control what he chooses to do, Ben. Armitage is an adult now, and his decisions have to be his own. Even if they’re not decisions you yourself like.” She squeezed his hand softly, her eyes searching his face with open concern.

Ben could feel hot tears prick the backs of his eyes, brimming beneath his lids even as he clenched them tight shut. “I hate this,” he repeated, and his voice cracked in the back of his throat. The crack was like the floodgates opening, and the tears spilled down his face, splashing on to his lap as his shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Rising from her chair, Leia came to stand in front of him and wrap her arms around him, cradling his head to her chest and smoothing her hands over his hair. “You’ll stay here tonight,” she said, her voice calm but firm. It wasn’t a question, or a suggestion, it was an order. It was already late, Han would be a while yet until he was back with the truck, and the biggest reason of all – she didn’t trust him to be alone. And he knew that once Han was home, and saw the state of him, he wouldn’t either. It dawned on him as Leia was holding him that in the current context of him breaking down in tears that she probably didn’t believe him about the cut on his hand being an accident. Han had probably told her about the hole in the wall at the garage, and now she was putting two and two together and drawing the conclusion that things were getting bad again, the way they had after Armie had left six years ago. He couldn’t even blame her. The feelings were the same.

Ben lost track of how long he sat there with Leia stroking his hair. Eventually he felt so drained that it was all he could do to drag himself away and slink miserably to his childhood bedroom at the back of the house, flopping on to the bed that he’d long since outgrown but that would serve him fine for just one night. There was a pair of French doors that looked out over the back yard, and from his vantage point on the bed Ben could see the old treehouse he and Han had put together when he was younger, the panels now rotting and too dangerous to climb on anymore. He’d taken Armie up there a few times, bringing up blankets and hot cocoa for them to drink during the warmer months when there was only a light chill in the evening air. Even now, it calmed him down to look at it, despite everything.

After a little while Han came back, and Ben could hear he and Leia talking in hushed voices out in the living room. They were talking about him, talking about the cut on his hand and the fact he’d cried, questioning whether he needed any help. He knew what they meant by ‘help’, of course – _professional_ help. The kind he’d had last time, for a few sessions, before it became obvious that there was only so much that talking it out could do, and that time was going to be the best healer for him.

It had been an awkward and uncomfortable relationship between him and the therapist at the local doctor’s surgery, who was more accustomed to running the town’s small Alcoholics Anonymous group and was clearly out of her depth with Ben’s deep depressive state. He remembered sitting in her office in silence while she well-meaningly talked him through the various stages of grief, wondering in the back of his mind if it would be fairer on everyone to just call it off and save Han having to keep the car idling in the one small parking bay outside for an hour. The sickly magnolia colour on the walls and the overbearing scent of the vanilla reed diffuser in front of the musty heater gave him a headache every time he entered the office, and there was nothing to distract him from it besides the bright posters on the walls describing various mental health symptoms under jarringly cheery headings – _‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!'._ In the end she’d prescribed him a month’s worth of Prozac on a trial basis that had ultimately disagreed with him and made him nauseous, and after a sit-down conversation with Han and Leia about the best way to move forward, he’d dropped the medication and the therapy and allowed them and his friends to keep their collective eye on him until things started to improve on their own.

And now he was back to square one. Or, maybe not quite, but it felt like a slippery slope. At least he hadn’t fallen into the stage of being mute and withdrawn yet; if he hadn’t busted his hand, he’d still happily be going into work tomorrow, seeing Finn and Rose, talking to them as normal. But there was no denying that the episode with Armie up at the big house had set him back a step, and he was angry at himself for letting it happen. Poe and Phasma had warned him that getting too close too soon could put him in hot water, and he’d become cocky following the success of that stupid birthday dinner and thought he could handle it by himself. And really, deep down, he knew it was none of his business what Armie did with his husband, or why he did it. If he wanted to marry for money, for an easy life without having to work, then as Leia said it was his choice and Ben had no right to interfere or get offended by it. Armie had decided a long time ago to leave Ben, and it was up to Ben now to regulate himself and not mistake Armie’s attempts at being civil and friendly as anything more than that. To do so would be to set himself up for failure, because clearly, Armie had made his choice.

And Ben needed to pull himself together. He didn’t want to go back to being watched over like a ticking time bomb about to go off at any minute. He didn’t want his friends side-eyeing him, worrying that he’d suddenly do something drastic to hurt himself. They’d only just got over that, they’d only just started acting normally around him again, and he was going to be relying on them more than ever now to just be there as friends, as a distraction. He couldn’t stand the thought of them going back to seeing him as broken.

Sighing, Ben pushed himself up off his bed and shuffled out to the hallway again, trying his best not to step on the floorboards that he knew were particularly creaky as he approached the living room. He rounded the corner and hovered in the arched doorway, poking his head round without emerging his full body.

Han was standing by the fireplace, still wearing his boots and flannel jacket. Leia was sat on the couch, right on the edge, looking up at him with a deep frown. “I don’t know, Han, maybe it would be a good idea for him to spend time with Luke for a while…?” she was saying, as Han shook his head and rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. Luke had retired from teaching when Ben turned sixteen, and now lived a couple of towns away on a large open ranch where he tended a very eclectic variety of animals including alpacas and peacocks.   
  
“Nah, nah, he’d hate that, the last thing we need is for him to feel like we’re trying to make him someone else’s proble…hey, buddy.” Han had lifted his gaze from the floor and spotted Ben hovering in the doorway, and he ran a hand through his grey hair, trying to appear as casual as possible. “Sorry, we wake you up?”

Leia looked over her shoulder quickly, her cheeks reddening at having been caught out. Ben came into the living room properly and walked over to stand behind the couch, settling his good hand on her shoulder. “S’okay, Mom,” he said quietly. “I’m good.” He took a deep breath, looking over at Han.

“Dad. Can you still wake me up on time tomorrow, take me into work with you? I figure I can’t do much with my hand like this but I wanna get started sorting the books out for taxes. It always takes longer than I think it’s gonna.” He was laying his cards out on the table, cards that said _‘I'm fine, I just want things to be normal’._ It was up to Han and Leia how they responded.

Fortunately, Han was a master at avoiding emotional outbursts, while still somehow knowing exactly what to do and say to make things better. “Sure,” he said, shrugging as though it were nothing and tucking his hands in his pockets. “I’ll be goin’ in around nine, so you can have a lie in, maybe grab some breakfast here, your Mom bought too many eggs last time she went to the store so I was gonna do a quick fry-up to use ‘em up before they go bad. I’d appreciate the help.”

Ben nodded, giving him a tight but genuine smile. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

“Right, good. If you’re up early anyway, you can do me a favour and give Chewie a walk.”

Even better. Han was one of the blessed people who knew that sometimes coddling someone and allowing them endless time to wallow wasn’t what was best for them, and instead it was better to just give them tangible things to do, to keep them busy. Walking Chewie was a plenty manageable task, one that he’d always enjoyed, and it would give him some time in the morning to gather himself together before facing other people at the garage.

“Well,” Han said, clapping his hands together as if to draw a line under the conversation. “I’m beat, I’m gonna head to bed. Honey.” He paused by the couch and dropped a kiss to Leia’s forehead; she tilted her head up to receive it. “Son.” He clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder, then shuffled off towards the master bedroom.

* * *

True to his word, Ben rose early the following morning before both Han and Leia were awake. The bed with its ancient springs had prodded at him all night in all the wrong places, and he was glad of the excuse to get up and stretch himself out with a walk. All his proper winter jackets and boots were at home at his own place, so he had to rummage around in the hall closet to find something that would protect him from the rain that had started to fall at around three in the morning. He eventually produced Han’s navy blue mackintosh coat and a miscellaneous pair of black wellington boots that he sat on the floor to pull on, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb his parents’ sleep. Chewie didn’t help, bounding around him and battering into the walls with excitement as Ben fetched his leash from the hook by the door. At least he didn’t bark, just had his huge tongue lolling out of his mouth and dripping onto Ben’s hand when he leaned in to fix the leash to his collar.

The ground outside was already completely sodden with water and more was still falling, and Ben made a mental note to remind Han to get the sandbags from the basement and pad them around the back and front doors of the house before they went to work. Chewie was covered in mud after only five minutes and managed to spray it all over Ben’s jeans as he ran in circles around him, Ben deftly swapping the leash from one hand to another while being careful not to put too much pressure on his new bandage.

The fresh air did him a lot of good, despite the unpleasantness of the heavy rain. It had the benefit of dragging up hidden smells from the earth, the rich scent of grass and freshly-cut wood from the timber yard deep within the woods floating further out than it normally would in dry weather. Two middle-aged women in thermal jogging gear power-walked past him, and the steam from their polystyrene cups carried the rich scent of coffee under his nose and reminded him how hungry he suddenly was.

Now craving breakfast, Ben cut the walk short just before reaching the town’s main street and managed to successfully pry Chewie away from a dropped paper carton of popcorn outside the small movie theatre on the corner. He doubled his pace as they walked back home, Chewie taking it as a game and speeding up beside him until he was tugging Ben along and straining against the leash. Once they were within sight of the house Ben leaned down and unclipped it for him, trusting him to know the way back from there. Sure enough, Chewie bounded up and started scratching at the door with his massive paws until it opened a crack and he could force his way inside. Even from a distance, Ben could hear Leia’s disapproving cry and Han’s hearty laugh.

Ben shuffled inside and removed his boots on the mat to stop himself tracking mud inside the house, greeted by the smell of cooking eggs and bacon from the kitchen. He’d thought that his walk had been quick, but a glance at the clock on the wall told him he’d actually been out longer than he thought, and he headed straight down to the basement with Han to fetch the sandbags while Leia arranged their food into bread rolls to be taken with them to work. It was strange, leaving for the garage from his parents’ house instead of his own, something he hadn’t done since he was much younger. Still, there was something assuredly comforting about Leia handing him his little breakfast parcel and kissing his temple before sending them off out the front door, waving at them from the step as they climbed into Han’s truck and drove away.

Finn was already at the garage when they pulled up, wearing a plastic rain poncho over his head as he pumped gas into a customer’s car. They rolled down the window enough to pass him a few bills, and he raised an arm to wave them off as they drove back off on to the main road. Rose was still away with her sister, but it didn’t look like they’d been busy in the hour or so that Finn had been there alone. There were no cars hoisted up in the main garage, and the car Finn had been filling with gas was the only other one in sight.

Ben jumped down from the truck and hurried to get under the cover of the garage roof, shaking out his hair like a dog and sending droplets of water flying everywhere. Once he was out of the rain, he went and took a seat at the desk and unwrapped his breakfast sandwich, taking a big bite before it could go completely cold.

“Might as well just chop it off at this point,” Finn commented, approaching the desk and gesturing to his bandaged hand as he removed the rain poncho. “How’d you manage that?”

For some reason, that wasn’t a question Ben had been expecting. For some reason he’d thought the bandage would just fly under the radar, and he didn’t know exactly how to respond. He wanted the fact he’d seen Armie the night before to remain a secret, because if people knew, then they’d want to ask questions about exactly what had happened, what they’d talked about. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, suddenly devoid of moisture and unable to swallow the bite he’d taken.

“Damn klutz broke the casserole dish,” Han supplied for him, coming up beside Finn and rolling his eyes. “Came over for dinner last night and decided he wanted to be helpful and do the dishes, only to drop the first thing he picked up ‘cause he went and forgot soap is slippery.”

Finn grinned. “Nice,” he snorted, chuckling to himself as he rounded the desk and disappeared into the back office,

Ben deflated, forcing himself to swallow and rubbing his good hand over his forehead. “Thanks,” he mumbled, glancing up at Han from under his eyelashes like a scolded dog. His bad, he should have come prepared to answer difficult questions. It was only then that something dawned on him, something he’d vaguely registered but hadn’t properly thought about when they’d parked up and come inside – the garage was _empty_. Completely. “Dad,” he said, catching Han’s arm before he could go off to change into his overalls. “Where’s Armie’s car?”

Han glanced over his shoulder as though he himself had only just noticed it was missing. “Oh. Uh, I fixed it up already.”

Ben blinked. “You what?”

“It was only a coolant hose, don’t think on it,” Han said, shifting from foot to foot. Ben could just imagine him the night before, in the pitch black, with the forecourt spotlights on full blast as he repaired the hose by himself in the silent garage. “Dropped it off last night too. Just made sense to get it over and done with since I had it here, right? No point hanging around.” He didn’t want Ben to have to look at it. That’s why he’d done it, Ben knew, he didn’t want him to have to come to work and see it. His heart clenched.

“And, uh. Did you…did you see him?” _Did you talk to him?_

Han shook his head. “Nah. Parked it up out front and knocked, talked to some…skinny guy, brown hair, British accent…they’ve all got damn British accents, I dunno, but it wasn’t him.”

Mitaka, then. Well, that was fine.

“And you didn’t…charge his card, or anything, he hasn’t paid yet, you didn’t send him an invoice?”

Again, Han shook his head, gently detaching himself from Ben’s grip and giving his shoulder a squeeze in return. “Haven’t charged him, no. We can write up an invoice and leave it here for him to come by and pay another time, but I’m not gonna chase him up on it.” And with that, he headed through to the back to get changed. A minute later, his little wind-up radio came on, relaying last night’s baseball scores in a crackly and muffled tone.

Well that was good, then, that had worked out well. Han had taken care of Armie’s car, and now Ben wouldn’t have another occasion or excuse to have to see him again. Someone else could handle the payment, if and when he decided to come and pay it, and Ben could get back to doing what he should have done in the first place – moving on. He finished off his breakfast sandwich in silence, listening to the pattering of the heavy raindrops on the garage’s metal roof until he’d run out of things to stall him from beginning the tax paperwork.

It gave him a headache quickly, but it did have the benefit of being so all-consuming of his attention that his mind had no reason to wander to anything else. With nothing else to do and a complete lack of customers, Han and Finn spent the majority of their day playing cards on an upturned spare parts bin and occasionally breaking off to reorganise shelves and clean oily bits of equipment. It was…peaceful, in its own way. Nobody rushing, nobody stressed, just the three of them spending amicably quiet time in each other’s company in case anybody should need them.

And, late in the afternoon, it turned out somebody did.

The green car pulled into the forecourt as the sky was beginning to darken, and they were debating whether to turn on the spotlights to help guide people in as the rain got heavier and more slanted with the wind. Han was having a coffee and possibly a nap in the back office at the time, but Finn was still out in the garage with Ben, looking over his shoulder and frowning as they tried to make sense of the stack of receipts in front of them. They both glanced up as they heard a car door slam, and Ben’s heart dropped into his stomach.

Enric Pryde was practically marching up the forecourt towards them, undeterred by the rain and looking like a man on a mission. In a moment of blind panic Ben half wondered if they were about to fight, before he remembered that Pryde should have no idea about he and Armie spending time together when he was out of town, unless Mitaka had said something, but Armie had seemed confident he wouldn’t. He soon realised that the look of anger and intimidation was just commonplace on Pryde’s face, an evident dislike of everyone that he made no attempt to hide. 

“Can we help you, sir?” Finn asked, straightening up and settling a hand on the back of Ben’s chair. He hadn’t been at the garage the first time Pryde came around, but Ben wondered if Poe had shown his boyfriend a photo at some point or another, since he appeared to recognise him and know who they were dealing with.

Pryde came to a stop in front of the desk, glancing back and forth between the two of them with open disdain. “I need my car washed,” he snapped, gesturing towards Ben with a careless wave of his decrepit hand. “He knows what to do.”

 _Get that hand out of my face_ , Ben thought, grinding his teeth together and remaining silent and still. That fucking hand. That creased, lined, liver-spotted hand that had no doubt touched Armie before, touched him intimately, in ways Ben had always imagined would be reserved for him. It looked frail enough to break, if he wanted to, and he was almost scared to discover that he did really want to.

Fortunately, Finn was better than almost anyone else he knew at picking up on a shift in mood, and he gripped the back of Ben’s overalls tightly with his hand where Pryde wouldn’t be able to see. Keeping his voice neutral, he said, “Sir, with the rain like this, I’d advise waiting until the weather passes to wash the car, it’ll only get dirty again after a few minutes on the road…”

Pryde looked as though Finn had slapped him, rearing back like he couldn’t quite believe Finn had the audacity to talk to him. Ben hoped he said something a step too far, something prejudiced or ignorant, just so he’d have an excuse to launch himself across the desk and throttle him. “Tell me boy, do I look blind to you?”

 _Boy_. That was close enough, that could be close enough for Ben. His muscles bunched under his clothes as he prepared to stand up, but Finn held on tighter, twisting the fabric in his hand to make it harder for Ben to pull away.

“No, sir,” he said tightly.

“And are you trying to tell me when I can and can’t wash my own car?” Pryde continued, raising his eyebrows and drawing the gaunt skin of his cheeks even tighter over his protruding skull.

“No. Sir.”

“That’s what I thought. So do as I ask, I’ve already paid up-front.” Pryde clicked his fingers in Ben’s direction, gesturing for him to get up from his seat behind the desk and tend to the car.

Again, Finn stepped in for him. “He’s hurt his hand, he can’t do any physical work today,” he explained. “I’m qualified to handle it, though, if you’ll let me.” He was being _far_ too polite for Ben’s liking, but he understood that Finn was just looking out for his job – both their jobs, really, since Pryde had the sort of power and influence that could probably get the whole garage shut down if he took a particularly strong disliking to them. Ben wondered if Armie would come to their defence if that ever happened, if there was anything he could physically do to stop it. How much sway did Armie really have in the marriage, anyway?

“I don’t want it done by a non-professional…”

“Sir. I am the only other person here, you can either accept me washing your car or wait for it to be done another day. The choice is entirely up to you.” Finn didn’t mention the fact that Han was back in the office, which was probably wise. Han tended towards the milder side in the face of confrontation, but Pryde was a special case, seemingly unparalleled in his ability to rub people up the wrong way, and Ben was clearly hurting. The combination of those two things together might just be enough for him to get violent, and then he’d be in the doghouse with Leia for the foreseeable future.

Pryde eventually relented and allowed Finn to begin working on his car, though his eye rolls and teeth clicks made it abundantly clear he wasn’t happy about it. A bucket of hot water was fetched from the back and filled with the gentle kind of soap they used on classic cars and brand new paint jobs, and Finn spent the next half hour carefully and meticulously washing all traces of mud and dirt off the pristine green exterior. It was a pointless, menial task – the second Pryde got on that dirt road up to the house, the ground of which would be practically swamp-like by now, the car would be a mess again and all of Finn’s efforts would have gone to waste. But he insisted, and he’d paid, so there was nothing they could do.

Ben watched him as he waited, constantly glancing up from the papers in front of him to glare at him over the edge of the desk. Pryde had situated himself in the corner closest to the forecourt and was on the phone to someone, though Ben couldn’t hear what he was saying over the sound of the rain on the roof and the occasional car driving past on the road outside. He did notice that Mitaka wasn’t with him this time, he’d driven himself, and he also vaguely registered in the back of his mind that it wasn’t the usual day he’d said he would come for his car washes. He said he’d come on Sundays, but today wasn’t a Sunday, it was a Friday.

He was so wrapped up with glowering at Pryde that he didn’t even notice Finn give the car its final rinse. He did hear him call out that he was done, however, and Pryde got in the car and drove back out on to the road without so much as a thank-you or a goodbye to either of them. Fine, good-riddance.

“Fucking ray of sunshine, isn’t he?” Finn muttered, upturning the bucket on to the forecourt and letting the sudsy water run away to join the rain in the gutter outside.

“I told you,” Ben commiserated, slamming the accounts book in front of him shut. The numbers had barely made sense to him before, they definitely wouldn’t now. He was still simmering, tension still held in every single sinew of his body that needed to be expelled before he could think about doing anything constructive. He stood up and stretched his arms up above his head until he heard a satisfying click, taking a deep breath of cool, damp air.

While his eyes were still shut, he saw a brief flash of light in front of his lids, and he opened them in time to see a familiar car pull into the garage. Rey hopped out the passenger seat and ran at him, and he barely had time to snap his arms down again to prevent her shoving her hand under his armpit to tickle him. He managed to avoid it by a split second, bending to one side to evade her. “Nuh-uh,” he said, taking a full step away to give her a wide berth. “No way.”

Rey grinned. “Hey,” she greeted, perching herself on the desk, on top of the book he’d just abandoned. “Hey!” she repeated louder, waving both arms at Finn, who was wringing out the sponge he’d used on Pryde’s car. He returned her wave and blew her a kiss, which she pretended to catch.

“You need somethin’?” Ben asked, rolling his eyes and trying to disguise how much better her presence was making him feel. If he had to design a human being in the complete opposite style to Enric Pryde, it would be Rey Skywalker. She had a sunny disposition that shone out of her wherever she went, and it was working wonders for him now. “As you can see, we’re real busy,” he added, spreading his arms wide to indicate the empty garage.

Rey rolled her eyes and scrunched up her nose. “Ugh, yeah, kinda. So, I have a friend visiting right now from out of state, and I just got back from picking her up at the airport and found out this stupid _pipe_ burst outside my house and the whole downstairs is flooded. We can’t stay there.” She fluttered her eyelashes in an exaggerated, Bette Davis-like fashion. “I was wondering if we’d be able to stay with you? Just for a couple nights, I’ve already called someone to come out and clear my place up, but for now we’re stuck. I’d ask Phas, but she’s got Unamo staying with her right now, and obviously Finn and Poe want their privacy and Rose isn’t here to ask…”

Ben rubbed the back of his neck as he thought it over. It was probably a good idea – Han and Leia would be less reluctant to leave their house if they knew he wouldn’t be alone at his own place, knew there’d be someone to keep an eye on him. And if Rey and her friend wanted some privacy, he could make up excuses to spend more time at the garage during the day times and just make himself scarce in his room during the evenings. “I guess…” he said, shrugging and accepting the bone-crushing hug she pounced on him with a winded little laugh. “Calm down, it’s my spare room, it’s not that glamorous.”

“No, seriously, you’re a life-saver,” Rey gushed, turning towards her car and waving one arm wildly to signal to someone in the passenger seat. “Kaydel will be so grateful too, she doesn’t have the money for a hotel right now – neither do I, honestly.”

The passenger door of the car opened and a figure stepped out, wearing a mustard-yellow raincoat with the hood pulled up over her head against the rain. Ben tried to remember if he’d heard Rey mention a ‘Kaydel’ before; Luke had insisted that Rey go to college before she choose what she wanted to do for a living, and so despite her eventually settling on construction and training under Poe upon her return to town, she’d spent several years out studying in California where she’d made a number of friends who Ben lost track of the names of. He couldn’t honestly recall having heard of this one, not that it mattered.

The woman approached the desk and removed her hood as she got closer, and Ben had to admit, she was pretty. Fine-featured with very big eyes and dark blonde hair, and a bright smile as she looked back and forth between Rey and Ben. “Hey,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Kaydel.”

Ben blinked, taking a second to realise what was being expected of him before reaching across the desk and shaking her hand politely. It was soft, the nails short and manicured. “Ben,” he said, nodding towards Rey. “I’m Rey’s cousin.”

“Ben’s gonna let us crash at his place,” Rey explained, linking her arm with Kaydel’s and giving her a squeeze. Turning her attention back to Ben, she said, “We’re going to that thing at Maz’s tonight, so we’ll probably be pre-gaming from, like…seven, I guess? We’ll try to stay out of your way, promise.”

Christ, Ben had forgotten about the ‘thing at Maz’s’. It happened every year, and every year he had mixed feelings about it. As a gesture of goodwill and as the only decent-sized venue in town that wasn’t the school itself, Maz hired out the bar free of charge for one night mid-September to the local high school so students could have a welcome-back party for the start of the semester. However, due to the loss of revenue from serving nothing but cheap soft drinks all night, she always followed that event up with a strictly 21+ night a few days after, where the bar was transformed into a night club to encourage people to spend as much as possible on alcohol and put her back in the green. All the tables and chairs were cleared away, the lights were shut off and replaced with strobes, and for one single night the town got to experience a club atmosphere without necessitating a long, expensive taxi ride to the city. Ben was usually dragged along by Poe and usually had a good time once he was actually there, and it was _usually_ a pretty surefire way of getting laid and breaking his otherwise quite depressing dry spell, but the build-up to it always made him feel uneasy. He wasn’t a dancer by nature, he wasn’t a fan of big crowds, and a combination of those things made the experience seem very unenticing on paper.

“Unless you’re coming too?” Kaydel asked, raising an eyebrow in what Ben thought looked like a hopeful expression. Did she… _want_ him to come? It felt almost like she did, and it threw Ben off for a minute. It had been a while since anyone showed any sort of interest in him like that, and even when it _had_ happened recently, it had been in the context of an awkward set-up date where they were most likely just showing interest to be polite.

“Oh, Ben’ll come, he always comes,” Rey interjected, grinning back and forth between them. “If I don’t drag him along, someone else will, there’s no getting out of it. He might even put a proper shirt on, right, Ben?”

Ben, with something of a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ look about him, swallowed a lump in his throat and did his best to keep his tone light. “Something wrong with my t-shirts?”

It worked. Kaydel laughed, that bright smile stretching over her face again. She really _was_ pretty, and she seemed nice – not that Rey would be friends with anyone who wasn’t, of course. “I don’t see anything wrong with t-shirts,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes with a little wink. _A wink_. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

Rey’s eyes were flickering back and forth between Ben and Kaydel as though she were watching a tennis match, a slow smile spreading over her face that she was clearly trying very hard to stifle lest it put either of them off. _“O…kay,”_ she said, drawing the word out to ease herself into the conversation and break the strange tension that had settled over the little scene. “Well, we should go settle in, get Kaydel unpacked. Keys?”

Ben shook his head clear and rummaged in the pocket of his jeans, fishing out the keys to his apartment and tossing them to Rey, who caught them one-handed. “Take whatever you want from the fridge,” he said. “Oh, and there’s beers in the cooler in the basement.”

“You’re a star,” Rey said, grinning and reaching over to ruffle his hair. She slid off the desk and walked with Kaydel back to the car, the latter glancing over her shoulder to smile at Ben one last time before they climbed in and drove away.

* * *

For reasons he didn’t want to overanalyse, Ben found excuses to stay late at the garage that night. Despite there being very little to do, and despite Han disappearing mid-afternoon following Ben’s dryly teasing assurance that he now had house guests to babysit him, Ben stayed on and busied himself with as many menial tasks as he could find. He brushed soggy leaves off the forecourt and unblocked the gutter right outside to stop it getting clogged overnight. He cleared the limescale out of the coffee machine in the back office and washed each little part of it individually. He shredded old documents they no longer needed and turned the shreds into a pulp.

Ben told himself he was just mildly intimidated by Kaydel and her undisguised flirting. He told himself it had been a while, and it wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to be involved with anyone, it was just that he’d forgotten how. He told himself he wanted to give her and Rey some time to themselves to settle in before he went home, and that by the time he actually left the garage for the night he’d feel a whole lot better.

In reality, though, he knew it was more than that. The truth of the matter was that, on the admittedly sporadic occasions he’d slept with anyone else since Armie had left him, he’d always without fail felt guilty the following morning. It made him feel ashamed, like he was breaking some sort of promise, and although he was fully aware it wasn’t healthy, he’d never been able to shake it. And so soon after falling in with Armie again and so quickly falling out once more, he didn’t know if he could handle it. Kaydel seemed nice, and he didn’t want to pull her into the whole mess just to disappoint and confuse her.

Still, he couldn’t put off going home forever, and eventually he had to admit defeat and close up the garage. He shut off the lights as slowly as he could and climbed into Finn’s car willingly so he could drop him home, not wanting to deal with the walk in the rain or with being alone with his thoughts for any length of time. As they drove Finn chatted to him idly about what he planned on wearing to Maz’s that night – a new shirt Poe had bought him, apparently, in a colour he didn’t usually wear but had been coaxed into trying on Poe’s insistence that it would suit him. The gentle topic was incredibly reassuring, and Ben found himself managing short little contributions in the forms of agreeing hums or dissenting head-shakes to Finn’s various opinions.

At one point he felt his phone buzz in his pocket against his leg, but it was closest to his bandaged hand and would probably tug at the wound if he tried to jam it round the seatbelt to retrieve it, so he let it ring out.

Upon arriving home he was greeted with, mercifully, more people than he’d been expecting. Usually the sight of an uninvited group inside his house would get on his nerves, but it eased some of the pressure he would have faced if it had just been Rey and Kaydel, so he found he really didn’t mind at all. Phasma was there with Unamo in tow, the pair of them already dressed for Maz’s in subtly matching outfits of silver and black, Phasma’s heels adding extra inches to her height that brought her head dangerously close to Ben’s low ceiling. Poe was also already there, which Ben hadn’t expected, assuming he’d have waited to come with Finn once he was ready, but he was very glad of his presence. He was also already clearly a few drinks deep, making him the loudest person in the room and blessedly distracting any attention from Ben himself.

Rey did manage to coax him into a ‘proper shirt’ eventually, marching him to his bedroom and rifling through his closet until she found one she thought was appropriate. It was white, a pristine white since he barely ever wore it – never enough to get it dirty, at least – and they reached a compromise where she allowed him to roll the sleeves to his elbows and pop the top two buttons open. The compromise was helped along by the fact that Ben volunteered himself up-front to be their designated driver for the night, given that everyone else had already sunk several drinks and clearly didn’t plan on stopping any time soon. Besides, if he was stone-cold sober and by the end of the night Kaydel was drunk, that was as good an excuse as any for him _not_ to sleep with her. And since he seemed to have unconsciously made up his mind at some point between leaving the garage and arriving home that he didn’t have it in him to be with anyone else that night, an excuse was very welcome.

He did sit through their drinking games while they waited for Finn to arrive, though he joined in with soda instead of anything alcoholic. And truthfully, he found that he was having fun without even meaning to. Poe’s infectious laughter and Phasma’s comically intense competitive nature were enough to ease the remaining tension from his shoulders and get him to properly loosen up, and he found his own voice rising in volume and his smile becoming broader as the evening drew on.

That was, until his phone rang again.

This time it was on the kitchen counter beside him, so he could glance at it quickly to check the caller ID while he accepted the small pile of cards he was being dealt for their third round of Irish Snap. And there it was. ‘Armie H’.

The phone’s buzzing was drowned out by the noise of the party, but Ben still worried that one of the others would notice he’d gone quiet and look over to check on him, and see the name on the screen in the process. He quickly reached up and pressed the ‘reject’ button without giving himself time to think, clearing his throat and forcing himself to turn his attention immediately back to the game. The objective was simple enough – everyone throw down a card into the centre of the counter until one happened to match the one before it, at which point everyone had to slap their hands down over it and the final person to react was forced to incorporate the middle pile into their own cards. The first to rid themselves of all their cards was the winner. Simple, and a perfect distraction.

Ben threw his cards down in time, managing a laugh every time there was a frantic scrabble to put hands down in the centre. At one point Kaydel’s hand came down right on top of his, her nails now painted a pretty gold, and he looked up to meet her eyes across the group with a warm smile. Maybe he _should_ try, with her. He couldn’t go on like this forever, at some point he had to bite the bullet and actually move on like he’d promised he would. And she was pretty, and she liked him, and she was there.

At his elbow his phone buzzed again, only once. A text.

_‘Ben please’._

Ben swallowed a rough lump in his throat and locked his phone, shoving it deep down inside his pocket, grabbing his keys off the table and announcing loudly – perhaps a little too loudly, perhaps a little too abruptly – that they should get going. Finn had arrived during their last game and everyone was assembled and ready to go, people grabbing for their coats and purses in a flurry of movement. Ben grabbed his own leather jacket and pulled it on, patting down his pockets to ensure his wallet was there.

The crush in the truck was comical. Ben sat alone behind the wheel while Rey crammed herself in beside him, Kaydel perched on her lap. Phasma let Unamo sit on her, and Finn on Poe, just about managining to get everyone in despite it being highly illegal and enough to earn him a ticket if they were caught. Kaydel leaned over to fiddle with the radio and get it working, her hand brushing over Ben’s leg as she did so in a way that could only have been deliberate, since it was quite a reach to manage it. His cheeks flushed, and he forced himself to keep his eyes on the road ahead.

They had to join a line of cars eventually that were queuing up to get into the small parking lot behind Maz’s. Once they were close enough Ben suggested they jump out and run the rest of the way in, since Poe was beginning to complain about Finn’s weight crushing his legs and Unamo was getting impatient with the fuzzy crackling of the radio signal distorted by the bad weather. One by one they all slid out and began to sprint across the wet gravel to the front door, where Ben could already see strobe lights and dry ice smoke drifting out as people came and went. Kaydel paused in the doorway of the truck before taking off, seemingly not caring as the rain soaked her neatly curled hair. “I’ll get you a drink for when you’re in – anything special?”

Ben blinked. He was driving, but he supposed he could have one drink, right at the very start of the night. It would wear off before he had to get behind the wheel again. “Uh…jack and coke?” he said it like it was a question, and she gave him a charming smile and a quick nod before pushing the door shut and running off to catch up with the others.

Alone in the truck with the rain hammering down on the roof, Ben took a deep breath. It was fine. He’d have a drink, dance a little if he could muster up the courage, and it would be a good night regardless of whether or not he ended up getting laid at the end of it. Because really, that wasn’t the point, the point was to remind himself and reassure his friends that he was okay, and that he wasn’t backsliding into any sort of dangerous mindset despite what the bandage on his hand made it look like. He could do this, just the same as he had done the past few years. Nothing had changed just because someone happened to be back in town now. Nothing had to be different.

Ben was eventually directed into a parking spot by a bedraggled-looking employee wearing a neon high-vis vest, waving cars in the right direction to avoid anyone getting bumped about in the chaos of the parking lot. It was _just_ about big enough for him to navigate the truck without scraping the two small SUVs either side of him, though he had to squeeze himself out with extreme care and rub himself up against the wet side of the truck bed in the process. Oh well, he’d dry off soon inside, with the throng of bodies all pushed up together and writhing in time to the music.

True to expectations, Maz had successfully transformed the place from the familiar cozy bar to a proper club. The floor was already sticky underfoot from countless spilled drinks, and a chemical smell hung in the air from the dry ice. The music was much more modern than the usual offerings from the old jukebox, which had itself been covered over with a tarp to protect it for the duration of the night. It was turned up so loud that Ben could feel the beat reverberating in his chest, and every time his eyes adjusted to the coloured lights overhead, they shifted to a different hue and threw him off again. Fortunately it seemed that Kaydel was on the lookout for him just as he was on the lookout for her, and she raised a hand to wave him over from her vantage point by the bar.

As he began to weave his way through the crowd towards her, he felt a vibrating against his leg that was at odds with the music around him. It took him a second to work out what it was, before he realised that it was his phone, for the third time that evening. Clenching his good hand into a fist by his side, he decided that he had to deal with this now, or it would just keep happening and ruin any chance he had of trying to clear Armie out of his mind for the remainder of the night.

Holding a hand up to Kaydel to indicate an apology for pausing, he made his way to the wall where the crowd was thinner and stuck a finger in his opposite ear so he could answer the phone and hear better.

 _“What,_ Armie?” he demanded as soon as he picked up, perhaps a little too aggressive.

What he heard on the other end of the line made his heart sink and his blood run ice cold. Armie was crying, there was no mistaking it, the hitches in his inhales and the sobs in his exhales.

“Armie,” he said, softer but no less urgent. “Armie, what is it?”

“I’m sorry,” Armie gasped, and Ben felt like someone was squeezing his heart impossibly hard in both hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t…I didn’t know what to do, I…”

“Where are you?”

“The…road again…same place…”

“Hold on.” Ben hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket, turning and making for the exit without a single glance behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW detail: Ben injures himself by accident while hooking up Armie's car to the tow truck, though he believes Han and Leia think he did it on purpose as a form of self-harm as an emotional response to the situation with Armie. We get a brief description of Ben's past experience with a therapist and anti-depressants right after Armie left town, where he describes both as not really working for him. There is also a brief discussion between Leia and Ben about the abuse Armie suffered as a child, though no real details are given. Ben's anger issues become apparent and he thinks about wanting to physically hurt Pryde by breaking his hand. 
> 
> Happy new year, everyone! Here's to the death of 2020 and everything that came with it. I hope everyone had a lovely time celebrating and that the new year brings a whole lot more happiness and relief. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter! It's a bit of a longer one again so I hope the pacing is alright. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter letting me know that you liked it, it means a lot! Please do let me know what you think of this one too, things will start to amp up now and we'll dive deeper into the backstory of everything that happened when Armie left, so that should be something to look forward to! <3 
> 
> Updated playlist (one day I'll put these all in a YouTube playlist to make it easier but for now we're doing this):  
> \- Twist and Shout - The Beatles (Chapter One - the song on the truck radio when Ben is driving to the garage)  
> \- Too Afraid to Love - The Black Keys (Chapter One - the song Phasma puts on the jukebox at Maz's to tease Ben)  
> \- Love Is Blue - Marty Robbins (Chapter Three - the song on the radio at the garage when Ben and Rose are working)  
> \- White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes (Chapter Three - the song Ben listens to while watching the lightning, and that he and Armie listened to on their storm-spotting date)  
> \- You Had Me At Hello - Mystery Jets (Chapter Four - the song playing in the restaurant when Armie and Ben start talking over dessert)  
> \- That's Entertainment - The Jam (Chapter Five - the song Phasma is playing in Poe's truck when they pull up to the garage to talk to Ben)  
> \- Dedicated To The One I Love - The Mamas & The Papas (Chapter Five - the song playing quietly on the radio when Ben and Armie are driving back up to the house in the tow truck)  
> \- The Therapist - Foreign Air (Chapter Six - the song playing at Maz's during the club night when Ben walks in and is on the phone with Armie)


End file.
